The War of the Flowers

10 LARKSPUR'S LAND

He was not simply traveling, he was stretching, somehow — as though a part of him were still rooted deep in the reality he had just left while an increasingly attenuated Theo-ness was being drawn out through thousands of miles of noise and light. All that he was seemed to be getting thinner and more insubstantial, until he felt himself to be a near-infinite, near-invisible line of consciousness, each mote of thought touching nothing but the single beads of comprehension directly on either side, and all of them pulling farther and farther apart. He was like a rubber band in the hands of God, and God was spreading His mighty arms as wide as they would go…

And then the rubber band snapped.

When he came back to himself, half his vision was filled with what at first seemed to be a smeary abstract painting of green lines. Grass. He was lying on his side in long grass, and something was moving.

He regained his focus in time to see Applecore, who was kneeling a few inches from his nose, bend at the waist and decorously throw up. Despite her appearance and proximity, watching didn't trigger his own reflex as it might have with another human being. He sat up.

That did trigger the reflex.

As Theo finished emptying his stomach, spitting over and over into the grass, Applecore took a deep breath and groaned. "Oog. It's worse coming here than going to your side."

"Glad… to hear that." He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. His head was thumping like a timpani solo and he would have sold his soul without hesitation for a bottle of mouthwash. "Because I don't ever want to feel like that again." He raised his head and looked around. "Oh, God."

It wasn't so much that anything looked expressly different, or wrong — in fact, it all looked very right in a sort of romantic, pre-Raphaelite kind of way: close-standing trees and shadowy grassy dales, beams of midday sunlight diving straight down through the forest roof like glowing plumb lines, sparked with dust and the bright flicker of flying insects. His nausea had faded, but still the colors around him were almost too strong, the edges too crisp; it made his eyes water to look at anything for more than a few moments. It reminded him of the way a dose of psilocybin made the colors of everyday objects leap out like neon.

"Where are we?"

Applecore bent again and spat an almost invisible streak of light. "Home. Well, home for me. What would you call it? I was never up with all that book-learning shower of shite, and Faerie can't translate what you can't say." She frowned, then brightened. " 'Course. Faerie. That's what it's called."

"So I was right. No, Uncle Eamonn was right." Theo stretched his legs out in front of him, listened to the almost subliminal fluting of birds. His headache and nausea had all but disappeared. He could almost forget that he had just been through the weirdest and worst half hour of his life. "It's… it's beautiful here."

"That's why they saved this piece," the little fairy told him. "Don't think this is the whole story, boyo."

He nodded slowly, although he had no idea what she meant. It was hard to think, almost exhausting: spending time in the midst of such overwhelmingly powerful scenery was hard on mortal senses. So strange, all so strange…

He turned back to Applecore. "What the hell was that… thing that came after us?" The unearthly scenery suddenly felt different, even threatening, especially the shadowy depths behind the closest trees. "Will it come here? Is it coming now?"

"Will it come? Likely." Applecore sniffed. "Now? Couldn't say, but I doubt it'll find you again so fast. Eventually, though. So is it a good idea to laze around in the woods like a fat gobshite? Likely not."

"What was it?" It took a moment. "Hold on, find me? What do you mean, find me?"

"Start walking first." She was up and away, quick as a dragonfly, twenty yards in a couple of seconds, then back just as swiftly to hang in midair before him, a grim little half smile on her face. "Just curious. You standing there with your mouth open — do you have to do that for a bit before your legs start workin'?"

He shut his jaw and let her lead him through the psychedelic forest.

"I'm not being difficult," she said as they came out of a stand of trees and into an open dell. "I just don't know much. I'm a messenger, me — strictly hired help. All I can tell you is that just like Tansy sent me after you, someone else must have sent that falling-apart thing. Doesn't take much in the brains department to figure that out. You said you've never seen anyone like me before, not in real life. Ever seen anything like that?"

"God, no!"

"There you are, then. It came from one of the in-between places, must have. If I could find you, then it could too."

He shook his head. He was tired of the adventure already. He wanted to lie down and sleep, but instead all he did was put one foot in front of the other, following this irritating little flying woman, on and on through what had changed from a magical landscape into a fatiguing nightmare, as though he were being forced to do a survival trek through a Disney film. The sheer visual intensity of the forest, the glittering motes of dust, the bumblebees bright as spun coins, the snaking, tangled roots and colorful toadstools in all their profusion, even the vivid green of the grass, was hallucinatory, and it was getting to be like an acid trip that wouldn't end. It made his head ache. "But why me? I'm nobody! I'm… boring!"

"Am I arguing? Just save some of the questions for the old fella — he'll probably be able to tell you a good whack more than I can."

"Tell me about him. You said his name was… Tansy?"

"Count Tansy, yes. One of the Daisy clan, but a good bit less stupid than most of your landowning shower." She pursed her mouth in distaste. "Still, I don't owe him nothing and I wouldn't have done this for him if he weren't paying me, even if he did say it was important."

Theo shook his head again. "Me? You're talking about me again. Important."

"Important to someone, yeah, or they wouldn't have sent ol' Bag-of-Bones to suck your brains out through your nostrils, would they?"

"Speaking of sending, why did this Tansy send you? Why didn't he come himself?"

"He's used his exemption already, I guess."

"He's used… what?"

She stopped, hovering, and held a finger to her lips. At first he thought she just wanted him to stop asking so many questions, but then he realized she was listening to something. His skin suddenly seemed to fit poorly, his heart to grow a little too big and violent for his chest.

"Is it… that thing?" he whispered. She shook her head, but did not seem very happy. He did his best to stay still so she could hear whatever it was she was straining her tiny ears after.

"Follow me," she whispered at last. "Quick but as quiet as you can. That means pick up those great clumping feet!" She zigzagged away toward the edge of the clearing and he half-ran, half-pranced on tiptoe after her through the wildflower-sprinkled grass. "Down here." She pointed to a gully shielded by undergrowth. Theo scrambled down into it, pressed himself into a mat of fallen leaves that glimmered silver and gold and smelled like something that came in expensive bags from a posh gardening store, then cautiously raised his head to look back at the clearing. It was empty. "Didn't expect I'd have to spend my last charm so soon," Applecore muttered.

"What… ?" Theo began, but Applecore flew up beside him and gave him a surprisingly solid kick on the jaw.

"Shut it!" she hissed.

Long seconds crept by, then what looked like a horizontal flash of sunlight burst from the trees and streaked halfway across the clearing in a heartbeat, then stopped, changing from blur to solid shape so abruptly that he almost gasped in surprise.

It was a deer, a huge white buck, with a spreading rack of antlers like two leafless trees carved out of ivory. It stared at the spot where Theo was hidden. The dark liquidity of its gaze seemed to mark him easily despite his held breath and tight-clenched muscles.

Beautiful, beautiful… was all he could think as it stood frozen in an angled stab of sun like a statue made of burning phosphor. It blinked, then leaped away into the trees on the far side of the clearing, a movement so swift and effortless that Theo could not at first entirely understand what had happened.

His mouth worked as he tried to express even a halting appreciation for the vision he had just been given, but Applecore's wings were buzzing beside his ear. She prodded him with her foot, more gently this time.

"Ssshhhh." Her whisper was so close he thought he could even feel the tiny puff of her breath inside his ear. To his surprise, she began to sing. Her voice was scratchy but tuneful. He could not make out the words, but the repetitive melody was oddly compelling, so much so that he did not at first notice that another noise was growing all around him, a sound that even at its loudest never became more than a flutter like rain on hard-packed earth.

The riders stormed into the clearing.

Again, he found himself dumbstruck, but it was a less simple awe than that which had pierced him at the sight of the stag. There were close to two dozen of the newcomers, male and female, dressed in costumes that seemed to come from completely random times and places, both modern and ancient; even the colors of the cloth were elusively inconstant, changing like mother-of-pearl, like sunlight on the water of a moving stream. The riders' faces were fine and proud and strangely ageless — every one of the hunting party could have been twenty or forty in human age, or neither. He found it was as hard to look at them as it had been to look at the land around him when he had first come through. His brain searched desperately for measurements, categories, ways to make these creatures into mere humans, but could not find the mechanism: they confused his familiar ways of judging people just as surely as the stag had turned him into mud and stone by the mere fact of its lightning-swift loveliness.

Even their horses were strange, although he could not say what was different about them — they had four legs, manes, eyes, flashing teeth. But that did not make them horses, at least not the sort of horses he knew, any more than elaborately curled and arranged hair, jewelry, and quiet conversations made people out of these frighteningly beautiful riders.

The hunt party paused in the clearing for only a few moments, riding around the spot where the stag had stopped, staring down raptly as though something were written there that they had never seen before. One of them, a tall man with long golden hair, dressed in something like modern riding gear (if riding clothes were ever made from millions of pearlescent scales) and carrying what appeared to be a rifle with a bright silver barrel and a bone-white stock, stood in his stirrups and pulled his mount around to face the quarter in which the stag had vanished. He spurred out of the clearing and the others followed him, swift as the crack of a whip, but so quiet that by the time the last of them had passed between the nearest trees Theo could not hear them anymore.

"That was Lord Larkspur," said Applecore after half a minute of silence. "The one in the lizardy suit. Seen him in the mirror-shows. He's better lookin' in real life, I have to admit, if you like that sort."

Theo wasn't sure what sort that was, but he wasn't even too sure of his own name at the moment. "Those were… fairies?"

Applecore snorted and drifted down to the ground a foot from Theo's face. "Damn few who aren't around here, 'cepting you. Flower-folk, those were. You might call them the local gentry. Oh, they think they're fine, but."

"They… they were fine."

For a moment Applecore only looked at him, something almost like hurt on her little face. "You've never seen them before, 'course," she said at last, then scowled. "Larkspur, right on top of us, and cursed lucky we were not to be noticed. By the Trees! I told you not to come back for me!"

Still overwhelmed, it took him a long moment to make sense of that. "Wait a minute, you mean back… back at the cabin? Are you saying I should have left you there, with that ugly dead thing?"

"I could have made a door for meself. I made that one just for you — I was planning to keep Old Ugly busy for a bit. But you dragged me through with you and buggered up the landing, so we've come down in the wrong spot." She shook her head. "Right in the middle of Delphinion. Shite and double shite. Even if we're near the edge of the forest we're half a day's walk from Daisy lands, the rate you waddle, and we don't dare go out from under the trees in daylight."

"We can't go out from under the trees… ?"

"Because this is Larkspur's land, ya thick. It belongs to him, and so does almost everything on it and a lot above it, including some of the birds. If we come out of the trees, chances are he'll know about it before an hour's passed."

"Hey, damn it, quit calling me thick. You may have saved my life, but that doesn't give you a license to kick my ass for the rest of it."

"Ooh, he's gettin' snappy."

"Look, a couple of hours ago I was back in my own world thinking about nothing more earthshaking than hopping on my bike and picking up a burrito to go, then suddenly I'm in the middle of Storybook Land being led through the enchanted frigging forest by Thumbelina — and Thumbelina's kind of bitchy, just between you and me. Anyway, I'd like to see anyone else do any better, so back off!"

He walked on in silence for a little while. Applecore didn't desert him, or even seem to have taken much offense, so at last he hazarded a question. "What the hell difference does it make whether this guy knows we're on his land or not?"

" 'Cause Larkspur's a Chokeweed, see? It would be one thing if he were a Creeper, or even a middle-of-the-road fella like Tansy, but I'm guessing every one of them Chokeweeds would be just as happy to slit your throat as look at you."

Theo was completely baffled. "Larkspur? Chokeweed? Aren't those plants?"

Applecore gave out a quite expressive noise of disgust. "Ah, well, I's'pose it's not your fault you don't know anything. Keep walking and I'll try to tell you a wee bit about things. But pay attention! Even if you do think I've been givin' you too much stick — and maybe I have, but then again maybe it's what you need — if I tell you to shut up, stop where you are and shut right up. This world is dangerous for you, boyo, and not just because the way you walk you're liable to trip over a branch and break your nose. Dangerous. Got it?"

He nodded.

"Right then," she said, rising into the warm afternoon air. "Get those feet movin'."

It would have been hard to absorb so many details of Faerie history and culture if he had been sitting in a quiet classroom listening to a professor or reading it in a textbook. Hearing it from Applecore while staggering through the bizarre and distracting forest landscape was a bit like trying to take a complex course in political science from an immigrant taxi driver during the first half hour in a new city. And his instructor's style was not the most helpful, either: every time he felt he was beginning to see the light, Applecore would suddenly decide to fly ahead and scout the terrain, or would buzz up in front of his face to comment adversely on his pace or attention.

What he did manage to grasp went something like this:

Fairies here came in all shapes and sizes, but the most powerful caste — the nobility, in a sense, or at least the upper class — seemed to favor roughly human shape and size, like the hunting party he had just seen. Like humans of a similar social position, they generally maintained residences in both the country and the City. (There seemed to be only one big city, as far as he could tell, apparently the same strange metropolis as described in his great-uncle's book.) The noble houses were all named after flowers, and these clans seemed to wield most of the control in Faerie.

"They own the powerhouses, don't they?" was Applecore's slightly cryptic explanation of why that should be.

The Flower-clans moved through a shifting and bewildering set of political alliances and conflicts, but the one that seemed most important for Theo to understand was the struggle between the Creepers and the Chokeweeds, since the subject of dispute was mortals. Applecore did not have a firm grasp on the entire history of the conflict, but as best Theo could make out, the Creepers believed in coexistence with human beings but the Chokeweeds were opposed.

"Opposed?" he asked. "What does that mean?"

"I suppose it means they want to kill them."

"Kill them?" A chill ran through him. "Sweet Jesus, how many mortals have you got around here, anyway?"

She wrinkled her little brow for a moment, thinking. "None that I know of, these days. 'Cept you."

He swallowed. It wasn't easy. "But… but why would there be such a big deal made about killing mortals if there aren't any here?"

" 'Cause it isn't just the ones here they're talking about killing, ya thick."

It didn't sink in for a moment or two, but when it did, he stopped walking. "Hang on. Damn it, stop flying! Are you telling me there's a bunch of… of fairies who want to kill all the people in the world? The people where I live? Real people?"

Applecore scowled. "What does that mean, 'real'? Amn't I real, you? If you cut me, do I not bleed? If you piss me off, will I not kick you up the arse?"

"I'm not trying to offend you, I'm trying to make sense out of this. What exactly does that mean, they want to kill mortals?"

She shrugged, still angry. "Like I said, it's a big political thing. If you want to know more, ask your man Tansy. I'm just the laboring class."

"Jesus." He started walking again. The magical forest was beginning to seem even less attractive. "How many of these… Chokeweeds are there?"

"Not that many. Maybe a quarter of the Flowers, tops."

"A quarter… ? Jesus Christ!"

"Would you quit saying that?" Applecore buzzed around his head three times. "It doesn't do me any damage personally, but there's plenty here as don't like it, not to mention that if we meet up with a stranger you'll give yourself away throwin' that name around sure as winter brings frost. Wouldn't go shoutin' 'Mohammed' or 'Buddha,' either, now you come to it."

"What, are you telling me the other fairies wouldn't notice I didn't belong here if I just kept my mouth shut?"

"You'd be surprised." She smirked. "There's some stupid fairies, but. Now, far as the Chokeweeds go, you've got to remember there's at least that many Creepers, and they like your sort well enough. The question is how many of the in-betweeners get pulled one way or the other. Don't worry so much, boyo — it's all been going on for a long, long time." She paused, hovering. "Hang on a bit, I hear something strange." She raised her head, tilted it. "Smell something, too…"

"What do you think…"

"Just stand here and do nothing, will you?"

"But…"

"By the Trees, I'm ready to start reading Chokeweed pamphlets meself after putting up with you, and I don't even have a vote! Now just shut it and wait for me." And she swung wide around him and then shot off like a bullet, a blur of red dress disappearing among the trees.

Theo sank to the grassy ground, then put his head in his hands to rest his eyes. It was all just bizarre past any grasping. A few hours ago he had been living a normal life in his normal cabin in the mountains of normal northern California. Not a great life, maybe — in fact lately a pretty pathetic-loser sort of life — but one almost completely empty of shambling, corpse-limbed monstrosities and smart-assed fairies.

How did Uncle Eamonn deal with this shit without going crazy? Of course, his great-uncle had gone looking for it. It had been his life's dream.

Reminded, he pulled the notebook out of the pocket of the leather jacket, which was tied around his waist. The book had been bumping against his legs so long as he walked that he had actually considered pulling it out and throwing it away, just to keep from going mad — Theo was not a great hiker, he was the first to admit — but it was pretty much his only connection to anything resembling the world he knew.

But I read almost all of it, he thought. I sort of remember some of the families being named after flowers, but why don't I remember anything about this Chokers and Creeps stuff?

He began to leaf through the pages as he waited for Applecore to return, wondering what else he might have missed that could save him from being eaten by big bad wolves or some other godawful thing. It was just so hard to believe that he was actually here — that everything in the book had been true…

Applecore buzzed back into view. "Trouble," she said. "We're right at the edge of one of Larkspur's farms. We could go around it, but it'd take us days longer."

"Days longer… ?"

"To get to Tansy's. Larkspur won't be anywhere near the farmholding — too busy chasin' that corpsey hart — but if one of his factors gets wind of you, his lordship'll come quick enough."

Theo shrugged. "So what are we supposed to do? You can fly, but I sure as hell can't."

She stared at him for a moment, perhaps about to say something rude, but instead she brightened and pointed a finger at him. "Disguise, boyo. That's how we'll save your mortal hide."

He waggled his arm. A shower of twigs fell out of the sleeve of his leather jacket. "What am I supposed to be, a scarecrow?"

"Quit messing about with the branches — they're supposed to stick out. Same with the leaves in your hair. No, you're not a scarecrow, you're a woodwight. A leshy, some call 'em. Bit big, but if you hunch over…"

"You mean I have to walk with this jacket on? I'll get heatstroke."

"You'll get worse than that if Larkspur and his mates get hold of you. Put you in the wicker man, roast you like a Hy Breasil potato, they will. Now quit squirming till I put this mud on your face."

"Mddd? Whnnuhhll?"

"So you'll look like a little old thing that lives in the woods and hardly ever comes out in the daytime." She buzzed backward a foot or so and hovered, surveying her handiwork. "A few more leaves in your hair would have helped. Ah, well. Keep the collar of that jacket up. Now follow me. No, I told you, walk slow. Like you've got crookedy legs."

"It's hard to remember."

"Tell you what, boyo, I'm trying to save your life and you're not helping. Maybe I should take one of these sticks and lodge it up your back passage. That'd make you walk slow enough."

"You know, on a per-inch basis, you may be the most unpleasant person I've ever met."

He followed her out through the thinning forest fringe. The mud on his face was itching already, but not half so badly as the twigs and dried leaves in his jacket and trouser legs. Theo did his best to keep up the shambling, arm-swinging walk Applecore had shown him, something like a chimpanzee with a broken neck, but it was hard to feel very confident about imitating something he'd never seen. "Are there a lot of these slushies around here?" He saw flat, green-gold land past the trees now. "The thing I'm supposed to be?"

"Hardly any," she said. "And leshies don't come out of the forest much, anyway. Maybe one day a year."

"What?" He pulled up short, rubbing at his face in irritation. "Then how is this going to fool anyone?"

Applecore flew so close to his ear that he winced at the pressure change. "I didn't say it would fool anyone," she hissed. "I said we had to hope it might because, first off, it's the only thing around here big and stupid enough for you to pass yourself off as, and second, on that single day when one of them woodwight fellas does come out of the forest, he walks around honking and whistling and acting mad as an old stick. Don't ask me why because I don't spend much time in the leshy taverns. But when they've got their spring fever on 'em nobody much goes near 'em, so if people think you're one, chances are they'll leave you alone. But just in case anyone does come up looking to pass the time of day, I advise you to start squealing and honking and whatnot, real grumpy-like. Got it? Because I'd say it beats the jabbers out of being roasted like an old spud."

Properly chastened, Theo fell back into his shambling, uncomfortable walk.

The great ocean of trees through which they had been traveling had thinned now to a few small copses dotted along the hillside. As they made their way from one cluster of trees to another, Theo saw that they were descending into a disconcertingly wide plain. It was hemmed on either side by rows of green hills, lush as something in the background of a Maxfield Parrish painting, but those were far away — the nearest at least a couple of hours' walk, Theo decided, and probably more. At the base of the hill they were descending the land had been leveled and plowed, the soil dark as ground coffee, but mostly obscured by a sea of waving, shimmering fronds. Here and there figures moved among the stalks, bending and straightening.

"What… what is all that?"

"Wheat. Bend over more, you're starting to look human."

He crouched, conscious of a nagging pain starting in his back. "But… but it looks like gold. Like real gold!"

"You don't think we make fairy-bread out of the same stuff you mortal fellas grow, do you? Keep walking."

Even as they descended the hillside Applecore led him in a wide swing to one side so they could cross the broad field closer to its edge. After a few minutes she lit on his shoulder — "If they see me flying around they'll wonder why a sprite's keeping company with a leshy," she explained — and nestled in among the twigs and leaves, but continued to issue instructions from her new perch. "Root and Bough, man, can't you remember to gibber a bit? And wave those arms around!"

Theo did not want to die in a wicker man or by any other quaint methods the locals might have devised. He did his best to make appropriate noises and movements. He could see that some of the nearer farmworkers had stopped to watch him over the tops of the rows, but was relieved to see that none of them seemed inclined to do anything but look.

He stumbled along, gratefully aware that the sun was beginning to dip toward the horizon. He had never thought of fairyland as a place where you could get a sunburn, although he supposed the mud and twigs would protect him from that, but it was certainly warm enough to make the leaves down his neck itch like sin and the hot leather jacket feel like a very cruel punishment. There was a tiny bit of solace in the smell of the wheat itself, a rich, heady aroma like freshly unkegged beer, as though there was drunkenness in the grain of Faerie even before any distilling took place.

As he reached the edge of the field and stepped between two rows of golden stalks, a trio of heads popped up only a couple of rows away. Theo let out a gasp of surprise and stopped. As astonishingly small as she was, Applecore still looked quite human, and the fairy-gentry he had seen earlier could also have passed for human at a distance, but the three faces staring at him were not so easy to mistake. All three had huge eyes, faces as wrinkled as a thousand-year-old mummy, and instead of noses just two round nostrils opening straight into their faces.

Something sharp jabbed his earlobe. "Make some noise, you eejit," Applecore whispered.

Theo began to wave his arms and moan. The strange faces regarded him expressionlessly for a moment. He lunged into the wheat as though heading toward them and they vanished down behind the row.

"What the hell were those?" he asked when he could hear them rattling away in the other direction.

"Dobbies," said Applecore. "Not too bright, those lads. But they'll not come back."

"Ugly." Theo shivered.

Applecore laughed sharply. "Ah, if you find those a bit homely, I'd hate to be in your shoes when you meet a killmoulis or one of them fachan. Or old Peg Powler herself!"

"Don't want to meet any of them," Theo said wearily. "Want to go home."

Applecore frowned. "Yes. Well."

It was a long trip across Lord Larkspur's wheatfields, but although they saw many other creatures tending the crops, brownies and hodkins and hogboons and other domestic fairies who, according to Applecore, did most of the rural manual labor, most of them seemed quite willing to keep their distance from Theo the Woodwight. The sun continued to sink lower until it seemed to be sitting atop the hilly meadows to the west. Once, when Theo looked back, he could see the forest stretching behind them all the way back to a line of distant mountains whose peaks were as faint as wind-tattered clouds in the southern distance.

"The forest…" he said. "It's huge!"

"The Silverwood? One of the biggest," Applecore said, "Inside the borders of Faerie, only True Arden and Old Brocéliande are bigger, or that's what they taught me."

"And it all belongs to this Larkspur guy?"

"No, no, he's not that important. Delphinion, the bit his family owns, only runs into one edge of the forest — just happened to be the place we ended up. It mostly belongs to the Six Families, like everything bloody else." She pondered for a moment, then darted ahead and out of sight. Theo slogged on. He could see the end of the wheatfield, now. It was very close.

Applecore was back within a minute. "We're in luck," she said. "The border is near — just the other side of the river, only a couple of hops. And there's a bit of woodland there, too, so we won't have to worry so much about being seen."

"Does that mean I can pull these damn leaves out of my hair?" He sighed. "Border with what, exactly?"

"With the Sun's Gaze Commune — the Daisy House lands, where Tansy lives. As for those leaves, just wait until we're across the river, boyo."

"Commune… ?"

"They're big on old-fashioned names for things, the Daisy clan. You really don't want to be wasting time discussing this now, do you?"

Theo staggered out of the last of the wheat like an exhausted distance runner breaking the tape, only to find that Applecore's idea of "a couple of hops" seemed to be derived from some kind of mutant-kangaroo scale. The river was wide and active, dark water and sparkling foam intermingled like some kind of living crystal, but it wasn't very near at all, not the way he felt. He groaned and sank down onto the grass at the edge of the field. "I'm not going to make it." He lowered his head, felt sweat and dirt and scratchy leaves on the back of his neck. "I'm dying of thirst, too."

"The river, Theo." She said it almost kindly.

As he got up and began to limp down the long hillside, he realized it was the first time she'd used his name.

He was only a hundred yards or so from the water, could feel the spray in his mouth and breathe the ozone tingle into his lungs, when Applecore, hovering beside his ear, said something he didn't want to hear.

"Oh, shite, we're in trouble now," was the way she put it.

"What?"

"Don't turn around! Riders on the far side of the field, back where we started. Some of Larkspur's march wardens, most likely. They look like they're talking to someone up there."

"Probably those Dob-thingies," Theo said miserably. "I never trusted the no-nose bastards."

"Just hurry. They're a long way away, and they don't look like… Whoops."

" 'Whoops?' What the hell does that mean?"

"It means they're riding across the field. Don't look back! But see if you can sort of hurry your bony arse toward that river, will you?"

Theo did not waste breath on more talking. He sped to a stumbling lope. Although he had abandoned any pretense at leshy-hood, preferring to concentrate on running rather than gibbering and throwing his arms around, he was pretty sure his fatigue and uncomfortable costume kept him from looking entirely human: a few of the leafy branches that had started under his collar had worked their way down past the small of his back until they threatened to become the stick-up-the-arse Applecore had mentioned earlier.

The sun had dipped behind the low western hills, and although it brought a measure of blessed coolness to the air, it also made Theo think about what it would be like to be chased through unfamiliar lands in the dark. He galloped awkwardly down to the edge of the river and stood there, staring at the current. He almost thought he could see faces in the eddying water, shapes like fingers in the froth.

"I'm… I'm not that good… a swimmer," he panted.

"Any nymphs owe you favors?" Applecore didn't seem to be joking.

"What's a nymph?"

She scowled. "I think you'd better just jump and swim hard and hope for the best. Because in about the time it's going to take me to explain, those horseback fellows are going to be here."

Theo turned to see half a dozen tall, mounted figures riding through the wheatfield, trampling the stalks as they came — not at full gallop, but not going slowly, either. "Oh, shit," he said, and jumped into the river.

It was stunningly wet — like ordinary water that had undergone some kind of molecular shift: in the moment of submersion he could almost feel it trying to force its way in through his pores like an invading force. He came up thrashing and spluttering, an electrical thrill of cold running along his spine and squeezing his skull. Trying to paddle, he dug at the water with tingling, clumsy hands, and for a moment he actually made some forward progress, but the current seemed to reach up and grab him, a cold fist that squeezed him hard and then turned him over and over like a toy; within heartbeats he had lost any sense of up or down. He tried to call out to Applecore, but there was only the ravishing chill and a view of sun and sky like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope — in fact, the coin of bright air rotating above him was getting smaller very rapidly indeed.

He was sinking, his last breath burning in his lungs.

Just as the blackness began to extinguish his thoughts, he thought he saw pale shapes floating toward him through the swirling, muddied waters. They surrounded him, their faces green as pale jade, hard and unsympathetic as masks. Their staring eyes were like bottomless holes, like abandoned wells forgotten in a field, but it didn't matter because he was sinking, sinking, drowning, dying…

11 A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCING SHED

Because she was by birth a loireag — a type of water fairy — Mary Mosspink had a patience with humidity that other, dryer folk did not possess. Even so, the hot damp evening depressed her, and she could sense that the mood of The Forcing Shed's patrons was not a good one. In fact, several decades' experience as an alewife told her it was the sort of night when it would be a good idea to prepare for trouble. She was already regretting that she hadn't found a replacement for Shortspan the half-troll, her other bartender and unofficial bouncer, who had called in sick.

The clientele was no different than usual, a few serious drinkers who always stopped in on their way home (but never actually seemed to go home), some Twilight District office workers who really would go home after a drink or two — the Eastwater-Merrowtown train station was just across the street — and a table full of young Flower bloods on the first stop of what looked like a long night's revel. These last were loud and a bit rude, but they'd already been in almost an hour and hadn't caused any serious trouble. In fact, nothing looked much different from normal, but Mary still couldn't shake the feeling of unease.

Thus, when she left old Juniper in charge for a moment and went back into the tavern office to get change for a gold Oonagh out of the safe, she took a package out as well. She unwrapped the Cuckoo automatic briefly to make sure there was a bronze-jacketed iron egg in the chamber, but also to check that the safety was on, then folded the cloth around it again and slipped it into the pocket of her capacious smock. When she had given the waiting customer his change and released the old greencoat back to the kitchen, she slid the gun into the shelf underneath the register, far enough back that Juniper or someone else wouldn't come upon it by accident. Just as she withdrew her hand, the front door opened with a bang that made her jump and set her small wings flexing.

Her initial apprehension seemed misplaced. The little brown figure backlit by the newly kindled streetlamps attracted the eyes of several patrons but did not hold them long. It was only a goblin, and not a very healthy- or happy-looking one, either. Mary scowled and stepped around the counter, meaning to head him off before he put the touch on any of her customers, but the little fellow walked straight toward her, bony-legged and awkward as a stork.

"Shake the Trees, who dragged that in?" laughed one of the young gentry as the goblin limped past, and a few of the office workers muttered or chuckled behind their hands, but that was all the attention anyone paid to the new arrival.

And I'll wager he's used to that, Mary thought.

"You are… hem… the proprietor? Of this drinking place?" He had the whining goblin voice, but he spoke with a certain cockeyed dignity. She wondered if he'd been drinking — goblins had a legendary fondness for strong spirits. Of course, she'd been in the business a long time and hadn't served many goblins, and in fact couldn't remember any of them drinking anything much heartier than fern beer, but why would everyone say that if it weren't true? Maybe they had goblin pubs they went to — hadn't she heard something like that once?

"Yes, I'm… this is my tavern."

His finger-length nose twitched. "A happy meeting for me. Hem." After the odd little throat-clearing noise, he leaned forward as though to impart a secret. "I am for the moment without gold of any coinage, fair lady, kind mistress. Not a fly-fleck."

She bit back a smile, unwilling to be charmed. It was too hot to encourage this kind of nonsense. "If you're after a free drink, you'd better try somewhere else…"

"No, no! That is a mistake you make of me. I ask for no favors and I want no drink." He rubbed at his nose, scratching it until it bent at least a couple of inches sideways. He was younger than she'd first thought, not even middle-aged, and fairly clean for a goblin, but he did have the infamous musky smell. "I wish only to know if there is a small task of some kind that needs attention — something that might earn me the price of a meal? At the moment, as I have said, hem, I have no coins."

She squinted at his tattered clothes and his long, bare feet. Her first impulse, to send him away, remained strong. He did have that slightly acrid goblin reek, and there was a still-nervous part of her that suggested tonight was not the night to do anything out of the ordinary. On the other hand, he was extremely polite for a goblin or anyone else, and he did have the look of someone down on his luck.

What if my dear old Semellus hadn't taken me in that night? Where would I be now? Rolling drunks down by the waterfront? Would I even be that lucky?

She decided she owed something, if not particularly to this strange little fellow, then to the memory of Semellus weft-Beebalm, who had taken in a young runaway and eventually made her the lady of the house, a wife in all but name.

"Right," she said. "You can do a bit of sweeping, I suppose. And then clear away and wash some glasses in the back. An hour or so should earn you some supper."

He made a courtly bow, his knee joints popping like wood knots in a fire. "Very kind this is, Madam Alewife. A blessing on your establishment. I call it down."

Now she did smile. "I see. And what would be your name?"

He raised a bristly eyebrow. "Ah. My name. Ah." He nodded slowly, as if asked to explain the secrets of the Elder Trees. "Button is my clan name. Mud is what they call me in the streets of this bright city. What I call myself, hem, that is too mysterious." He shook his head sadly, then looked up at her, his yellow eyes bright. "I wish you only well, you see."

It was too hot for goblin-riddles. Mary pointed to the broom.

The little fellow seemed to be a decent worker, and although he attracted some unfriendly attention from the young bloods sitting near the billiard table — a youth in Thornapple black and gold seemed to be the leader, and had already sent one of Mary's serving girls running to the back room in tears — the goblin applied the broom steadily and stolidly. As the evening wore on a party of older gentry came in, three prosperous-looking men and a woman, all a little cheerful with drink already, and their presence seemed to keep the noise down at the Thornapple table. Mary found herself relaxing.

When Button had finished sweeping, Mary caught him by his bony, furred elbow. "You've done well. Why don't you take a moment to have something to eat? Juniper has made up a nice rabbit stew tonight — I'd definitely take that over the shellfish if I were you. And I'll pour you a glass of ale to go with it."

The yellow eyes glinted and the long nose twitched; now he seemed to be the one holding back the smile. "Most and very kind, Mistress. If you would please put that meal in a sack for me, then I will take it with me when I have finished my work. I mean to share it with someone, you see. As for ale, so sad but your kindness is misplaced, as I do not drink. Hem, but now I have thought that perhaps my friend would like some. Is it possible to put ale in a sack?"

"Ah, not really, but I'll see what I can come up with. Come on, sit down and eat. You can take the rest with you."

He drew his arm away gently, but with enough force for Mary to realize that although he was less than three-quarters of her size, he had a surprising, wiry strength. "No, with thanks. Not allowed to eat here in public. Hem. It is a strangeness of my own." He made a funny little bow. "Just clearing away the glasses, that is what I will do now."

She shrugged and let him go. After she had leaned into the service hatch to the kitchen to ask Juniper to find a spillproof container for the stew, then handed the old greencoat a bottle of Orchid Lightning Pale to put into the sack with it, she found herself still shaking her head as she mopped down the bar. She hadn't ever really talked to a goblin before. Were they all this odd… ?

Juniper appeared from the kitchen, wings drooping in the heat, and set the sack down on the bar, but he didn't go away again. Absorbed in cleaning the taps, Mary found herself wondering with a measure of irritation what the old fellow wanted. Did he disapprove about giving bottles of ale to goblins? But that didn't explain why the whole room had suddenly become a great deal quieter, or why her neck hairs were all standing on end.

Juniper muttered, "Think this might be trouble, Mary."

She looked up to see a bit of jostling by the young bloods' table. The goblin was struggling to balance a tray of glasses while the young Thornapple blocked his way with an outflung leg. The young noble's companions were chortling in anticipation of a little fun.

"These glasses, they belong to the alewife," Button said with a certain nervous dignity. "It would be shameful, yes, if I were to drop them."

"Shameful for you or for me?" The Thornapple youth laughed — and he was a Thornapple, she could see him clearly now; there was no mistaking those white eyebrows — then flicked a calculating glance toward Mary. "Put them down if you're worried. I just want you to answer my question."

The goblin did not want to look him in the eye. "Yes. I answer you, yes. I am a goblin."

"We know that!" said Thornapple.

"We can smell it!" one of his companions brayed.

"I asked you if you were a real goblin."

Button again tried to get away, but Thornapple folded a long-fingered hand around the creature's skinny forearm. "Please, I do not know what you mean…"

"That's enough." Mary stepped around the edge of the bar. "Let him go."

The young Thornapple looked up at her with lazy satisfaction. She felt a shock of recognition when she saw that the eyes in his handsome face were two different colors, green and black. This wasn't just one of the young Thornapple cousins, this was Orian himself, the heir apparent, eldest son of one of the most powerful men in the City. Used to being recognized, he grinned at her expression. "I'm not harming anyone, Mistress." His use of the title was adroitly contemptuous. "Are you really going to call the constables over a conversation?"

Mary Mosspink hated bullying, hated it worse than almost anything. As a child growing up in the Merrowtown waterfront slums she had seen enough of it to last a lifetime, but the bullies of her childhood had possessed no other attributes beside brute strength. This kind was more insidious, less forgivable, bullying by those who had no need, who already owned the City and everything in it.

"Go back to your bar," said Orian Thornapple. "The little fellow is going to tell us a story, that's all. No harm to him. That's what a real goblin does, isn't that right?" He squeezed Button's arm companionably. "Tells true stories?"

The goblin turned his yellow eyes up to her. There was something in his look that went deeper than his words, but it was a far more complicated emotion than simple fear. "Do not worry for me, Madam Alewife."

Mary stood, tangled by indecision. She ought to throw them all out, the whole smirking table. But who would do it, with Shortspan out sick? And even if she managed, then what? The thing of it was, if the youth wanted, he could probably get her license taken away. Then she would find out how accurate her earlier musings about a life without The Forcing Shed had actually been.

She hated her own cowardice, but she was at least brave enough to recognize it for what it was. "You let go of his arm," she said at last. "Just let him go. Then if he wants to talk to you, he can." She stood in place until the handsome young man released his grip, then did her best to make her retreat to the bar look like the walk of someone who'd just defused a problem. When she got there, she half thought about pulling out the gun, but knew that would only make the situation worse — she certainly wasn't willing to shoot Orian Thornapple or one of his friends. That wouldn't just lose her a license, it would cost Mary Mosspink her precious freedom as well. At the least. Still, she stayed close to the register and the hidden package, certain now that her intuition had been right, that if there had been a wind on this sticky-hot night, it would carry disaster.

Some of the other patrons seemed to think that the disagreement was over and resumed their conversations, but the room was still tense. Mary watched as a couple of Thornapple's companions got up and went to the six-hazard table behind the goblin. They picked up cues and began to stroke the balls across the baize in a desultory fashion, but they were really just preventing a quick retreat by their leader's chosen victim.

"Now," said Orian Thornapple, "You did say you were going to tell us a story, didn't you? A real old goblin-type story? A true one?" He leaned forward unsteadily; for the first time Mary saw how drunk he was and felt a cold wash of terror. She should never have walked away. She looked for Juniper to ask him to call the constables, but couldn't see him.

"Tell me a story about fathers," said young Thornapple.

"But, young master, why do you want a goblin story?" Button seemed less frightened than Mary would have expected, or else he was hiding it well. "The tales that goblins make, they are well-known, and not very satisfying to folk like yourself. All goblin stories have a hole in the middle of them."

"Don't talk rubbish. Tell me a true story. About fathers who live too long."

By the Trees! Mary thought. He is drunk — either that or he's mad. He's asking the little fellow to tell his fortune… or his father's fortune, which is a lot worse. It was an article of folk wisdom, much-believed but never definitively proved, that goblins could sometimes foretell the future. But whether it could truly be done or not, it was certainly not allowed to try to spy into the fortunes of one of the High Council, and Thornapple's father was one of the Council's leaders.

Even some of young Thornapple's companions were looking a bit nervous now, but whatever expansive strangeness was upon the Flower lordling seemed to make him oblivious. Mary Mosspink wondered how much he had drunk. Or maybe it was something else — ghostweed, or even dust. "Talk, goblin" he said. "I don't give a rap about any hole in the middle. Tell me a tale."

Button bowed his head toward Orian Thornapple. "Be it so, then." He took a breath, held it for a moment in silence. The patrons sitting nearby, who had been pretending not to listen, now gave up all pretense.

"Once," the goblin said, "in a time when things that went around still went around, there was a very old fellow — a pinchpenny was he, who had little love for, hem, anything except gold. In his youth he had briefly taken a consort, and from this union a child had been born, a son. After she had left him the boy's mother had died in hunger and want, unhelped by the child's father.

"As he grew older he grew less capable of the working of his own land and keeping of his own house, but remained reluctant to spend any of his money, so the old fellow decided that he would bring his son back to live with him. He did this not out of love, but in the desire to have a servant he need not pay. Many people of the village saw this, and many whispered that the sooner the old man went to feed the Trees, the better it would be for all whose lives he touched."

Orian Thornapple seemed to like the goblin's story so far: he was smiling broadly, sitting back in his chair. He was alone at the table, now. His friends had moved to the six-hazard table, where they were talking quietly and a bit worriedly among themselves. "Better indeed," Thornapple said, and chuckled.

"Now the young one had a son of his own — yes, a very little boy — and they both came to live at the house, and the little one's father made him do many of the harder tasks his own father gave him to do, so that the small boy had scarcely any rest from sunrise to sunset. So there were three living together then in that house, the old fellow, his son, and the child who was the old man's grandson.

"One day the child discovered that there was, hem, a goblin living in a hole near the house, and because he had not yet grown cold to the world as had his father and grandfather, he shared what little he had to eat with the goblin, often leaving a crust of bread or a boiled root at the mouth of the hole. One day, he came back and discovered that the goblin had left him something in return — a toy of sorts, a bird made all of gold.

"When he showed this bird to his father and grandfather, both were consumed with greed. The grandfather insisted the bird should be his, since it was his house and grounds where the goblin lived. The younger man insisted just as strongly that since it was his own son who had tricked the goblin — as he saw it — into giving gold in return for crusts of bread, the bird belonged to him. They argued and argued until the younger fellow, in a rage, killed his own aged father. He then told the little boy that his grandfather had gone away, that they would have to work even harder now, and sent the child to bed.

"He had decided to make the goblin produce more gold, so he crept out beneath the moon's light to the goblin hole with a sack of flax seeds in his hands, then scattered a handful of the seeds all around it and laid a trail of them back to the house, where he flung the rest of the sack of seeds over the floor, knowing that the goblin was properly bound by the Laws of Things and so would have to, hem, count them all, and that since he would not be able to do so before the sun came up, the goblin would then be bound to the house and forced to do his bidding.

"He hid and watched the goblin walk past, nose close to the ground, eyes squinted as he counted the flax seeds. He waited outside the house until dawn's light began to shine in the belly of the sky, then he went in.

"He found the boy and the goblin sitting on the hearth rug together, drinking betony tea.

"Later, the little boy sold the house. With what it earned him, he was able to become a rich merchant, and never needed to sell either of his two golden birds."

The goblin, whose voice had become very singsong, suddenly stopped talking. He blinked slowly, once, twice, as if awakening from a dream. "That is the end of my story," he said.

A few of the patrons at other tables began to whisper. A woman laughed. Mary realized that despite her nervousness, even she had drifted into in a sort of half-sleep.

"What kind of nonsense is that?" Orian Thornapple struggled up out of his chair, stumbling a little. He loomed over the goblin. "What kind of story was that… that rubbish? It made no sense!"

Startlingly, a wide, sharp-toothed grin appeared in the goblin's face. "For the price, it seemed a very sensible story to me, Master."

"Why were they just sitting there drinking tea? What about the flax seeds the goblin was supposed to count?"

"The boy had come down in the night and found the seeds scattered on the floor. Fearing that his father and grandfather would be angry over the clutter, he had swept them all up."

"But…" Young Thornapple scowled. It made his face much less handsome, and much less mature. "What was that babble at the end — the child sold the house? Where was his father? And you said two gold birds, but there was only one!" He grabbed the goblin's shoulder.

"Such are goblin tales," said Button, even as he swayed in the other's grip. "Can you really not guess what it was that happened to the child's father, who had tried to trick the goblin and failed? Can you not imagine where it was the second gold bird came from?"

The woman who had laughed earlier did it again, and this time she was joined by a few others, including the table of older Flower-folk. Orian Thornapple turned and glared at them, then seized both the goblin's shoulders and shook him. "You think you have made a fool of me, do you?" The little creature did not make a noise, but Mary could feel the storm-precursors of violence crackling in the air. She turned to pull the package out from beneath the register, shook off the covering cloth, and dropped the Cuckoo automatic into the pocket of her smock. "That's enough… !" she called, turning back to Thornapple and the goblin.

"So!" The Flower lordling's cry was triumphant. Even as his friends came forward, perhaps trying to prevent what was about to happen, the youth bent and snatched up something that had fallen loose and clattered to the floor near the goblin's feet. Thornapple held it up; it gleamed a smoldering yellow-green, making his fist glow. "What is this? What is this?"

"It is nothing," said the goblin, tugging at the youth's wrist in an ineffectual struggle to get it back. "It is only something to light my way home through the dark — a witchlight."

"Leave him alone," Mary said, but so quietly she barely heard herself.

"Hmmm, I'd say it looks like a weapon." Thornapple turned to his friends and the other patrons. "Wouldn't you all agree? Hasn't the Council spoken very firmly about the penalties for goblins and other noncitizens owning weapons?" He turned, holding the struggling Button at arm's length, and called to one of his companions, "Go fetch the constables. I think they'll be interested…" Suddenly he shrieked and began to shake the arm, trying to dislodge the very creature he had held captive a moment earlier. "Cursed thing! The little skin-eater bit me! He bit me! I'll kill him!" Thornapple flashed something out into his other hand — a blade, thin but wickedly long.

Mary yanked the pistol out of her smock. She was only planning to wave it around in a manner purposeful enough to stop everyone in their tracks, maybe fire it into the ceiling if necessary, but as she turned around a tall, scrawny stranger in tattered clothes came lurching up the aisle of the tavern, his eyes and mouth stretched wide with terror or pain. She lowered the pistol, confused. The newcomer staggered moaning toward the goblin and Orian Thornapple, his hands pressed against his ears as though someone had laid the grandfather of headache-curses upon him. The Flower lordling let go of the goblin, sizing up this bizarre new threat with a smirk that suggested he didn't think it amounted to much.

"Some kind of goblin-lover, eh?" Thornapple asked, lifting his long knife.

"Stop!" the apparition shouted at him. "Leave him alone! Stop all your voices! Get out of my head!" His voice rose to a shriek and something exploded with a krrrooom! like indoor thunder, turning all the world into pure white brilliance followed by utter blackness.

For a single mad instant Mary thought she had pulled the trigger of her gun by mistake, but even a Cuckoo automatic didn't make a bang like that, and after the echo died down to a painful ringing in her ears she was still sightless, down on her knees and scrabbling absently with her hands for something she couldn't even imagine. People were screaming. A lot of people were screaming.

"Who turned out the bloody lights?" Someone grabbed her leg. "Who's that?"

"Juniper? The lights are off? You mean I'm not blind?"

"The bloody power blew out."

"Thank the Grove for that. I thought I lost my eyes."

The power came back on a few minutes later. Surprisingly, almost no one had left. Orian Thornapple certainly hadn't. He was lying on his back beside his table with his throat ripped out, surrounded by an extremely wide puddle of blood and beer. The hand that had held the goblin's witchlight no longer existed: the arm now ended at the wrist, a scorched stump.

The corpse looked quite surprised.

"Bad," Mary told Juniper. "This is very, very bad."

The goblin and the scrawny fellow were gone, of course.

The bad stuff started slowly, although Mary Mosspink had no doubt it would pick up speed soon enough. The leading Councillor's son had been murdered on her premises, even if no one quite understood all that had happened. The mere fact that she was completely innocent and that the young idiot had brought it on himself would be of little account when the wheels of officialdom began to turn. But the detective constable who interviewed her did not seem unduly vengeful and she allowed herself a little hope. When Mary told him what she remembered about the goblin, he quirked his mouth in a sour smile.

"But you know his name, if he didn't lie," she said. "People always say goblins never lie."

"Everyone lies," the constable said. "I don't care what they say about goblins. But it doesn't matter." He explained to her that there were some twenty or thirty thousand members of the Button clan in the city, and that at least half of them had been called "Mud" at some point in their lives. It was a bit like saying someone was named "Hey, you."

The constables extracted statements from all the employees and customers before leaving Mary and old Juniper to clean up the mess. It wasn't until hours after young Thornapple's body had been taken away that she realized that despite what must have been a fairly pressing need to escape in the darkness, the goblin had not only taken the time to finish off Orian Thornapple, he had also remembered to take the stew and the bottle of ale he had earned with him.

12 THE HOLLYHOCK CHEST

As consciousness sluggishly returned, all Theo could remember at first was what seemed an odd dream in which he had been a sack of potatoes. No, a sack of wet potatoes, and a sack being handled rather roughly, at that.

He kept his eyes closed and tried to figure out where he was. The bed was big and soft, so it wasn't the cabin. But he didn't live with Cat and her quilts-on-top-of-quilts fetish any more, unless the breakup had also only been a dream, like the potato-sack nightmare…

Wait a second. He had been a wet potato sack carried by a two-legged elephant. And there had been a bumblebee flying around his head, talking to him in a funny little buzzy voice. All of which meant…

… Absolutely nothing. Except that it had obviously been a really weird dream…

Hold on. Buzzing. Flying. Fairy. Fairyland. Applecore!

The whole grotesque adventure came flooding back as Theo's eyes popped open. A huge white comforter was draped over his legs, and beyond that was the footboard of a large wooden bed. Good so far. But beyond the footboard sat a gray, lumpy person the size of an industrial refrigerator.

Theo gasped and yanked the comforter over his head. A voice like someone dragging a manhole cover down a cobblestone street bellowed, "Hoy, Ted! Tell the boss he's awake."

It was comforting not being able to see, because the large gray person he had been looking at just before he had made the swift decision to pull the covers over his head and pray it would go away had not been a comforting thing to observe.

"You can come out, Pinkie." The voice was so deep and rough that just being in the same room with it made his kidneys hurt. "I'm a vegetarian."

"No, you're impossible," said Theo, but without much conviction.

The thing laughed. "Funny Pinkie. Come on out. The boss'll be seeing you in a moment. You might want to leak out some fluids or whatever you lot do after you wake up."

Just because I look at it doesn't mean I have to believe in it, Theo reassured himself. He slowly inched down the covers until the top halves of both his eyes were exposed. The commitment made, he did his best not to squeak with fear: the thing next to the bed gave the old playground expression "butt-ugly" a whole new meaning.

Is this what my life's going to be like from now on? Just one horrible, weird thing after another? That sucks for days.

The predominant color of the thing's bumpy, wrinkled skin was indeed gray, but not a simple gray: it held a complicated array of hues with strange undertones, like the exterior of an anciently decrepit concrete building left to weather and collapse, a gray that suggested the kind of walls where graffiti had been painted over and then re-graffito'd in a continuous cycle for about a thousand years. The thing's face, however, made the rest of its gnarled hide look positively kissable. Its eyes were just tiny little points of red light deep under brows so heavy someone could have tended bar from behind one of them. Between them was a formless gob of lumpy, crusty gray stuff that could only be called a nose because it had nostrils, and because it was more or less in the center of the thing's face. The mouth was open, displaying a grin so jagged and horrifying that Theo's fingers involuntarily tightened on the quilt again. The bald, gray, gruesomely massive thing was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, but even so its head was at least five feet above the ground. It must, he guessed frantically, weigh as much as a medium-sized car.

"Hello," it grated, and leaned toward him, batting eyelids like folk-art saucers. Its breath was what might more properly have been expected out of the southern end of a triceratops. "My name's Dolly. You know, you're kind of cute for a pink boy."

He was fanned awake the second time by the wind from tiny wings. Whoever was standing on his chin was saying angrily, "It's not funny, you bloody ogre. If I'd been here, I'd have flown up your nose and gone on a three-month search for your brain, just so I could kick it back out your nostril."

"Oh, mulch," the deep voice said grumpily. "It was just a joke. They're such frail things."

"He's been through a lot." The fanning stopped. "Come on, boyo. Wake up."

Theo opened his eyes.

"And don't look up my skirt, you rude shite." With a flick she flew up from his chin and back a yard, forcing him to sit up, groaning, so he could see her. The massive gray thing was still sitting on the floor but it looked a little chastened. It was no wonder he'd mistaken it for an upright elephant in his first dream…

"Hold on," he said. "How did I get here? Did… you carry me?" He paused. "And is your name really Dolly?"

"Close as you'll get to saying…" and she belched out a gnashing, grinding noise that made Theo's kidneys ache again. "So it might as well be 'Dolly,' yeah. I carried you. My brother Teddybear took a turn, too."

"Teddybear… ?"

"That's how ogres name themselves," Applecore told him. "They get their names as kids, called after their favorite toys. But before you get all sentimental, her brother's teddy bear was a full-grown live bear that he eventually squeezed to death by accident. And Dolly… well, boyo, you don't even want to know what she used for a doll."

"No. No, I don't." He looked around, as much as anything else to avoid looking at gigantic gray Dolly, who was grinning again. Except for his leather jacket, reassuringly draped over one bedpost, everything around him was a bit odd and unfamiliar. It was a good-sized room, full of tasteful little details of the kind that might be found in an upscale bed-and-breakfast. (Theo and Cat had stayed in one in Monterey once, and Theo had been amazed how much money you could charge to let someone sleep in your spare room if you had a vase of cheese straws on the mantelpiece and a needlepoint of an otter on the wall.) This room had soft, shimmering cloth hangings on the wall and very little ornamentation except for an upright wood-and-glass-object on the bedside table. He guessed it was a clock radio even though its face was triangular and there seemed to be more unreadable symbols on it than the numbers on a standard clock. But unlike the Monterey bed-and-breakfast, or in fact most rooms that fell into the category of "guest room" as opposed to "cell," this room had one door and no windows or vents of any kind, although something that looked a bit like an air conditioner with a covering screen made of silk was sunk into the stones of one wall. Air conditioners in Fairyland. He couldn't wrap his head around it at all. "Where am I, exactly?" he asked. "What happened?"

"You jumped into the river," she said. "And you didn't even ask first."

"Ask? What do you mean, ask? You told me to do it! There were people chasing after me!" But they hadn't been people, of course, he remembered, they had been angry fairies. That was part of the problem.

"Not ask me. You don't go jumping into someone's river without getting permission," Applecore said sternly. "Ignorance is no excuse. Look at your arm. No, the other one."

He stared. Tied around the base of his left wrist was a single strand of wet green grass. He tried to slide it off but it wouldn't move. He couldn't unpick the knot, either, and the grass was as unbreakable as some kind of space-age carbon fiber.

"It's not going to come off. You should be grateful you got away so lightly, boyo. That's a nymph-binding, and it means you owe a powerful favor. I had to work hard to bargain that, so they didn't just drown you, or worse."

"Worse… ?"

"No more questions. I'll explain later. Just be glad that the Delphinion and Daisy commune people got together a while back and chased all the Jenny Greenteeths out of that river, or you'd be… well, best not dwelt on. Your Jenny doesn't haggle like the nymphs do, she just starts chewing. Now get up."

He looked from the band of preternaturally strong river-grass to the hovering fairy. It was plain that as long as he was in this damned Fairyland, he'd never, ever get the kind of answers he wanted to anything. He'd just have to try to catch up on the run.

"I still don't know where we are."

Applecore snorted. "The only place you could be without being dead, right about now," she said. "This is Tansy's house in the Daisy family compound — the Sun's Gaze Commune. I told you we were coming here."

"Bit mad is our boss," Dolly said. "Tansy likes lost causes and whatnot. Oddities and so on. Mortals."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say he likes 'em," said Applecore. "But he wanted this one, so we're off now."

Dolly shrugged. "You can take him. I made sure he wasn't carrying anything he shouldn't before I put him to bed." She gifted Theo with another leeringly jagged smile, and for the first time he realized he wasn't wearing his jeans and shirt any more, but instead something halfway between pajamas and a martial-arts costume made of slithery grayish silk. "You're smooth all over, aren't you?" said Dolly. "I like that. Novelty, I call it."

Theo was still shuddering as he followed Applecore out into a broad, carpeted corridor. He pulled on his leather jacket, which he had snatched off the bedpost on the way out. It looked strange with the silk ninja pajamas, but at least it was something familiar. In truth, though, not everything seemed as strange as he had expected: the soft, fur-lined boots that had been thoughtfully placed by his bed felt quite pleasantly ordinary, the walls on either side of him seemed nothing more exotic than pale, sandy stucco and although the light fixtures set at intervals along the passage were intricately ornamented, the lights themselves seemed to be… "Electric bulbs?" he asked Applecore. "Is there really electricity here in Fairyland?"

"I can't say I ever could make sense out of electricity when anyone tried to explain it. But, no, these lights are scientific. They work by magic."

Theo still felt like his brain wasn't entirely connected, but he couldn't help wondering why his uncle's book had described a kind of gaslight or even oil-lantern version of Fairyland — something like Victorian London: instead, from what he could see of the quite modern decor and appliances, Eamonn Dowd seemed to have gotten the similarities wrong by a good hundred years or more.

I'm tired of weird stuff, he realized. I just want to go home. I'll go along and meet this old Tansy fellow, the one who likes mortals, and I'll answer some questions. Maybe he wants Uncle Eamonn's book? In a sudden panic that it might be lost he groped at his jacket pocket, but however intrusive the rest of Dolly's search might have been, she had at least left him his great-uncle's journal.

So I'll meet this Tansy guy, give him the book if he wants it — it's not worth staying here to keep it, that's for sure — and then I'll get him to send me home. For a moment he could even imagine that things would be different for him now, after such experiences. I'll change. I'll get my life together. Maybe I'll even write a novel and get famous — use Great-Uncle Eamonn's ideas, and what I've seen myself… how hard can it be to write one of those fantasy books, anyway… ?

Theo was interrupted in these creative musings when another large, heart-attack-inducing figure stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hall. The floor gave a little under its weight. "Hello, Gnat," it rumbled.

"Don't get cute, you massive shower of gray shite," said Applecore, but almost fondly. "We're here to see your boss."

Teddybear, who was even less attractive than his sister (if such a thing were possible), nodded his huge head. "He's expecting you. Go right in." He looked at Theo. "And don't do anything stupid, Pink Boy. I took you out of the river and I can put you back in. From here."

Theo hastened after Applecore into a sparsely furnished antechamber, something that looked like it might have been designed by an unusually artistic Trappist monk. He looked over his shoulder to make sure they were alone before asking, "Are all ogres like those two?"

"No, not really." Applecore settled onto his shoulder. "The big ones you don't even want to have in the house. Really dreadful, they are." She reached over and pinched his earlobe. "You know, I think Dolly's a bit fond of you."

"Shut up. Just… shut up."

A stranger walked into the room, a tall, slender man apparently in his thirties with a long white lab coat and a long white ponytail. He looked Theo up and down coolly, then turned away. "Come along," he called over his shoulder.

"Who the hell is that?" Theo whispered to Applecore, who still rode his shoulder.

"Count Tansy, 'course. You'd best get on with it."

"But… but he's not… !" What had he been expecting? Old? Kindly looking? Just because Applecore had once referred to him as some kind of doctor… ?

Tansy led them out of the formality of the antechamber and into something much more chaotic. To Theo's first, startled glance it looked like the early days of computing, of that time which he knew only from photos and magazine articles when people had mounted their first generation PCs in handmade wooden boxes, before such things had been replaced by mass-produced plastic cases. On second glance, the technology seemed more sophisticated than that, with unrecognizable machines stacked on every surface in the room, although there did seem to be rather an emphasis on attractive wooden cases, not to mention controls of fluted glass instead of workaday buttons and switches.

Tansy stopped at one of the tables and picked up a pair of spectacles which he donned before turning around to inspect Theo again. The lenses made the fairy's violet eyes seem larger, but did not make him seem any more like a kindly old inventor; rather they gave him the look of some kind of trendy European conceptual artist, which was in keeping with the techno-minimalist decor. The clothes he wore under the white lab coat — and now that Theo looked at it, it seemed a bit stylish for a lab coat — were also white. In his hawkfaced way, he was quite handsome — even beautiful.

He looks like the angel that tells you you're not getting into heaven because you didn't make a reservation, Theo decided. He extended his hand, feeling awkward. "Hi, I'm Theo Vilmos…"

"Yes, you are." Tansy nodded once and ignored the hand until Theo curled it away again. He turned to Applecore, who had sprung from Theo's shoulder and settled on one of the polished wooden surfaces, legs dangling. "You are a week late, sprite. What happened?"

A week late? Theo looked down at his grass-bound wrist. Jesus, was I unconscious that long? No, couldn't have been. Did it take Applecore an extra long time to reach me in the first place?

As she launched into a highly technical explanation of their encounter with the corpse-thing and their arrival in Larkspur territory, using words like "outflow" and "trajectory" and "proximate entry shift" that didn't seem like they belonged in a "magical-trip-to-Fairyland" kind of situation, Theo could not help noticing that his tiny guide's demeanor had changed. She was all business now — perhaps even trying a little too hard, flinging technical terms around like a roadwork foreman explaining to a company VP why his crew had accidentally put a jackhammer through a power cable.

"Yes, well." Tansy dismissed the rest of the explanation with a flick of his long fingers. He looked at Theo again, not angrily, but certainly not with a great deal of human warmth either, as if Theo was a guest's dog rather than an actual guest. In fact, after all the trouble of getting him here, Tansy hadn't really spoken to him yet.

Human wamth — that's the key, isn't it? Theo decided. He's not human. And I don't even think he likes humans very much. And if this purple-eyed fellow was one of the sympathetic ones, Theo had a sudden, chilling premonition of what it might be like to encounter some of the more unsympathetic of Tansy's folk.

Well, so I'll never be Fairyland's Mr. Popular. "Why did you bring me here?" he asked.

Tansy raised an eyebrow thin and white as a line of high-test cocaine. "Because I was the only one who could find you."

Theo puzzled over this for a moment. "That doesn't really answer my question."

"Wait until I finish with the sprite." The lord of the manor turned back to Applecore. "Is there anything else important you need to tell me?"

"Bunches, I'm afraid." She lifted off the tabletop and hovered, looking a bit frayed. "First, that dead-bodies thing'll still be following him. If it found him there, it'll find him here."

Tansy looked over the top of his spectacles. "I hope you're not suggesting I couldn't puzzle that out for myself."

" 'Course not, Count Tansy. Right. Well, also, when we were leaving Larkspur's land, the lad here went into the creek. That's why I had to fly straight here and get Dolly and Teddy to bring him home."

"The creek? You mean the Graywindle? It's strange that the nymph gave permission…"

"She didn't, not exactly. Not at first." Applecore flew over and tugged Theo's left hand up so Tansy could see his wrist. "I had to let him be bound."

The fairy lord shrugged. "The mortal's affair, not mine."

"But it will affect how he travels, sir."

Tansy shrugged again. "He may not. Finish your recitation."

"Well, and when we bumped into Larkspur and his hunting party, I had to use my own charm because I used up all yours earlier, scuffling with that ugly thing. It wasn't much, just a small-and-secret thing, a Once-in-Thrice Misdirection I got through a friend's discount, but it was my last bit of protection. So I'm without defenses, sir, if you see what I mean."

"I'll see you compensated, of course…" Tansy began.

"Hang on a moment," Applecore said, then flushed — Theo could see it even from a few feet away. "Sorry for interrupting, sir. Sorry. I just realized, a moment ago you said, 'He may not.' What does that mean, if you don't mind my asking. May not what?"

Tansy looked like he did mind her asking, at least a little, but couldn't be bothered to make a point of it. "May not travel. You see, things have changed."

"How so?" Applecore moved a little closer to Theo, hovering almost protectively, he thought.

"As I may or may not have explained to you, I did not want this mortal for myself, but because certain others wished me to summon him." Tansy turned and moved to a low chair, settling himself into it with remarkable grace. For the first time, Theo noticed that this important fairy had no wings — nor had any of Larkspur's hunting party had them, now that he thought of it. Hadn't Eamonn Dowd written something about the upper-crust fairies and their wings? "He was wanted at a conclave in the City," Tansy continued, "— a meeting of some of the most important leaders of both the Symbiotes and the Coextensives…"

Applecore flew close to Theo's ear. "Those are the Creepers and the in-betweeners — the groups who are against the Chokeweeds," she whispered.

Tansy frowned. He obviously had sharp hearing. "I must say I deplore those oversimplified names. It is the worst kind of common goblin-talk." He shook his snowy head in irritation. "Besides, we Coextensives are not "in-betweeners," a poor choice between two more dynamic parties. Rather, it is the other two parties who tend toward extremist positions, and we are the moderate and sensible majority on which society depends." In his strange way he seemed the most human Theo had yet seen him: a bit of color had even crept into the skin stretched over his pale cheekbones. "In any case, some of my fellow Coextensives felt it was important that this mortal be brought here…"

"Theo Vilmos. I have a name. I'm not just 'this mortal.' "

Another wave of the hand. "… That Master Vilmos be brought here, and although I am a busy person with many important projects, they convinced me to help. I was to bring him… you… here, and one of the young fellows of the Hollyhock household — a prominent Symbiote family, and good folk despite a certain political naïveté — was to come here and escort you to the conclave."

"But what happened?" Applecore asked. "Have they canceled this meeting or some such?"

Tansy shook his head. He sat silently for the space of a dozen or so heartbeats, then rose from the chair and walked over to a surface covered with wooden boxes whose shimmering screens were unlike those on any electronic device Theo had ever seen, as though they were not solid at all, but some kind of vertical liquid. Tansy moved his fingers slowly over one of the boxes and the screen rippled and glowed, then he closed the lid. Although he didn't much like Tansy, Theo had to admit these fairies were fascinating to watch. As with the folk in the hunting party, every gesture Tansy made, even the most apparently spontaneous, seemed like something choreographed and practiced. It's like they've been in some kind of Applied Gracefulness crash course since the second they were born.

Finished with his first task, the tall fairy pulled open a drawer, then lifted out a silver box the size of a hardbound book and put it on the tabletop. Applecore buzzed over to examine it; after a moment's hesitation, Theo walked over to join her.

"This was delivered yesterday," said Tansy. "The tommy-knocker who carried it was one of the workers from the mine on the far side of our estate. He did not recognize the fairy who gave it to him and bade him bring it here to me. In fact, the knocker said no one had ever seen this stranger within the bounds of the commune."

The box was an ornate thing, the silver chased with designs of birds and tree branches. In the center of the lid was an emblem of a round flower with overlapping petals.

"That's the Hollyhock crest, isn't it?" Applecore asked.

Tansy nodded. "It is. But I don't think it was sent by the family of the young man who was coming for Master Vilmos. Look." Tansy lifted the box's lid, unleashing a waft of spicy smells that held a faint acridity underneath. Inside, nestling on white petals, was a small object the size of a child's fist, wrapped in red paper.

"It's a heart," Tansy said. "Dried and stuffed with rue." He gave a short, sour laugh, but his face was turned away and Theo could not see his expression. "I rather think that means we shouldn't expect your escort, don't you? At least, not any more of him than this."

"Good God, the way he said it — like he didn't care!" Theo sat on the edge of the bed. His legs were still trembling. "Like it meant nothing."

Applecore was perched on top of the screen that looked like part of an air conditioner, vibrating gently. "They're not like us normal folk, those Flowers," she said, then looked up. "What am I saying? You're not like us normal folk, either."

It was almost as hard for Theo to accept the casual way Tansy had dismissed him as it was to have found out that one of the few people in this whole mad world who seemed to have a vested interest in his safety was dead before Theo had even had a chance to meet him. "This all just sucks. What am I supposed to do now?"

"Don't know. He'll talk to you again this evening, he said. Don't push him, Theo, that's my advice. They're a mad shower, the Flower-folk. You can't hurry them after anything."

"But what about me? I didn't want to come here. What am I supposed to do now?" He stood up and began to pace. "What about sending me back? Can you do that?"

She shook her head. "Can't."

"Can't? Or won't?" His voice was rising, even though a part of him was ashamed to realize he was shouting at a woman the size of a saltshaker. "Doesn't anyone here care that I've just been… snatched out of my normal life, without anyone asking me? Just kidnapped, for Christ's sake!"

Dolly stuck her huge, blunt head in through the door. "You're hurting my ears, Pinkie. Sit down and talk nice."

He sat down, clenching his teeth. He might be angry, but he was not stupid enough to argue with a couple of thousand pounds of bone and gristle that, according to Applecore, could run faster uphill than most mortals could sprint downhill.

The little fairy came over and lit on the blanket beside him. "I'm sorry for how things have turned out, but don't go confusing the facts. I didn't kidnap you, I opened a door without explaining it because Tall-Dark-and-Crumbly was going to suck the marrow out of your bones, probably without even taking off the meat first. I didn't fetch that thing down on you, either — it was coming on its own. And when you went through that door, fella, I didn't drag you."

He stared at her for a moment then let his face sink into his hands. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's just…" He sat up. "Look, just… talk to me. Maybe we can figure something out. Why can't you send me back to my home? If I stay here, won't that thing find me? That… zombie?"

"You're better off here, to tell you the truth. Tansy's got defenses. Besides, it's not that easy, just sending you back — it takes a lot of power, especially when you don't want anyone to notice. Even without the Clover Effect, getting someone through to the other world, it's like… like building some big, complicated ship. Takes a long time, a lot of work."

"But you did it once already."

"Because he arranged it. I don't think I could do it by myself, even if I had a trip left — I'm not a scientist like Count Tansy."

"If he's a scientist, it must be the Dr. Mengele kind. The kind that thinks of people as lab rats." He thought for a moment. "You said before that he couldn't go, and that's why he sent you. Why?"

"That's the Clover Effect, named after some experimenting Flower-fella. It's been so ever since we lost the king and queen of Faerie. We used to be able to go back and forth whenever we wanted, although there were some places that were easier for it than others. Now we can only go through to your world and come back here once apiece." She sat down on the comforter and combed her reddish hair out of her eyes with her tiny fingers. "That's our exemption, we call it, that one trip. Works coming from your side, too. Unless you're pure spirit like that thing that tried to kill you, that is — they can go pretty much wherever they want and then get their meat from wherever they end up, but the rest of us can't. So you need someone like Tansy or his friends to get you back home."

"So I just have to sit around here and hope that your boss has enough magical oomph to keep that monstrosity away from me until he decides what to do with me."

"More or less. Sorry."

Theo slumped back against the headboard of the bed. "So what are you doing working for someone like this Tansy guy?"

"I grew up here on the commune."

"Why is it a commune, anyway? A commune's where everybody's equal or something. Seems to me like the whatever you call 'em, the Flowers are in charge here like everywhere else."

"It's just a name from something back in the old days. The Daisy family used to be radicals, back during the First Unusual Era. They like tradition no matter what, so they kept the name."

"So you live here?"

"Not really. I live in the City now, but my family mostly are still here. We Apples have the freeholding of an orchard and everyone who's at home works in it — even Pip and Seed, my two closest brothers, and they always said they were going to run away because they hated it."

"Your family owns an orchard?"

"Not the land, but like I said, we've got the freehold on the trees. Ten acres' worth," she said proudly. "A thousand trees and more."

"Oh." He nodded. "What kind of trees?"

She rolled her eyes. "My name's Applecore. My da's name is Applewood. Ma's called Applebough. I got brothers and sisters named 'Pip, 'Seed, 'Skin, 'Blossom, to mention a few. One of 'em's even called Applebutter. So what kind of trees do you think they are?"

"Oh. Yeah, I get it."

"Quick as a hummingbird's hind end, aren't you?"

He scowled. "I thought I told you to give me a break. How did someone so little get to be so damn snippy? Is it some fairy-thing? Did your mama dip you in the Nasty River when you were a baby or something?"

She laughed. "One to you, boyo."

"You didn't finish explaining why you're working for Tansy."

"Ah. Well, his cousin Zenion Daisy is the lord of the manor here on the commune, at least as far as being the one with the seat in Parliament — he's the one who grants our freehold. But they're a tricksy lot, these Daisies, still sort of freethinkers by Flower standards, and they all share in running the place or doing whatever else interests them — Zenion's sister Dyspurnia actually makes most of the decisions. Tansy's had me help him out before, mostly gathering herbs or other things — he's mad keen on science but he's no herbwife. And I've run a few errands for him in the City, found books he was looking for, obscure charms, like that. I've had trouble finding much other work in the City, though, so when he asked me if I'd do this — well, the pay was good."

"But… but why didn't he send someone… someone…"

"Bigger?" She scowled. "Don't pretend, you, I know what you were going to say. Goes to show what you know — that's why he sent me. The smaller the person going through, the less disruption, so the less power it takes to send 'em. I'll bet it still turned all the lights off here when I went, but."

Theo sighed. "So on top of everything else, sending me back is going to take some huge amount of power or something?"

"It's not easy," she said. "That's why they call it 'science.' "

"Then I'm just totally screwed." A wave of misery washed through him. They said you never appreciated your hometown until you moved away. How about your entire world?

Applecore looked at him for a long moment. "Tell you what," she said. "I'll go talk with him — with Tansy. He's really not a bad fella by Flower standards."

Theo gave her a bleak look. "Yeah, probably hardly ever beats the servants to death or anything."

"Just quit feelin' so sorry for yourself. Stay here and I'll be back in a bit." She rose from the bed and hung in the air for a moment, looking as though she wanted to say something more, but instead she turned and shot out the door in a fizz of swift-beating wings.

Bored and depressed, Theo got up and began pacing the narrow confines of the room, letting his hand trail along the hangings on the wall, which caressed his skin more like a liquid than like fabric. He stopped in front of the object that looked something like a clock and examined the strange glyphs arranged around the edges of its triangular face. It sure looks like a clock radio, he thought. I could listen to some music while I'm waiting. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Listening to music invented on an entirely different world?

He touched one of the small silvered bumps on the surface of the wood, but if it was a button, it didn't do anything obvious. He pressed another, then dropped the object onto the bed in surprise when a voice whispered out of it, asking what sounded like a question in a language he did not understand. The thing bounced a couple of times until it reached the end of its cylindrical cord. The whispering voice said nothing else.

He waited a couple of minutes just to be sure, then picked up the clock radio or whatever it was in his hands and tried another button. At first he thought that this hadn't done anything either, until he realized that the wood was growing smolderingly hot beneath his fingers. He yelped and dropped it onto the bed again. A wisp of smoke rose from where it lay, so he jerked it up off the bed and held it by the cord.

"Shit! What do I do?" he said to himself, out loud — always a bad sign. Old Tansy'll love me if I burn down the family manor.

The thing was growing hotter — he could feel it on his exposed skin even with it dangling a foot away. In a growing panic, he shoved the bed a little bit away from the wall with his legs so he could try to reach the outlet while keeping the clock safely away from anything flammable. It was a tight fit, and the clock thing swung toward him as he bent, rummaging awkwardly behind the bed, and bumped against his head. It felt like the time he'd picked up one of Cat's curling irons without noticing it was plugged in and he let out a shriek of pain.

He finally got a grip on the cord down near what looked like an outlet, a rectangle of pale wood set directly into the stone of the wall. He yanked, but the cord did not come loose. The clock swung near his head again and frizzed a lock of his hair into a crisp curl. He braced his hip against the bed and yanked again, as hard as he could. The cord came away with a loud pop! and a flash of greeny-blue flame. For a moment he could see a round circle of teal fire still flickering on the outlet plate, then even the hole was gone, leaving nothing behind but smooth wood.

He looked at the cord dangling in his hand. The ivory-smooth knob at the end where it had connected to the outlet was as featureless as if it had just been sawn off the tip of an elephant's tusk.

The clock, or whatever hellish device it might be, was already cool.

Theo stuck his head out into the corridor. Applecore had been gone at least an hour and he was getting crazy with restlessness. Tansy's lab or whatever they'd call it here was down that way, but Theo had no intention of dropping in on him and reinforcing the fairy's dislike of mortals by blundering in at an inopportune moment. He'd just go for a stroll in the other direction. It wasn't like he was a prisoner or anything, was it?

Was it?

He stood in the corridor, wondering why it seemed longer than it had when he had looked down it before. How big could this place be, anyway? Was it the main manor house for the Sunny Days Commune or whatever Applecore had called it — Theo could only remember it had sounded like some kind of organic dairy — or was it a separate building? Well, finding a window could tell him something, and getting outside into the air would tell him even more.

He glanced up at a bit of sky peeping in through the skylight. It felt like it should be late afternoon, and certainly the oblong of blue overhead looked like that was about right.

Maybe I should leave a trail of crumbs or something, he thought. Which reminded him that he hadn't eaten anything since he'd been in Faerie, nor had he drunk anything except river water, and most of that by accident. There's a destination, then, he decided. I'll hunt for the kitchen.

Of course, it wound up being a lot more difficult than it looked. The house, most of which seemed to carry on the spare white-stucco-and-color-accents look of the parts he'd seen so far, seemed not just large but oddly unintuitive in the way it was laid out. Every time he thought he'd figured out how it worked and expected to turn a corner and find himself back in a main corridor like the one outside his room, he found himself standing instead at the edge of some kind of sunken living room with a pond and live trees growing through carefully laid-out gaps in the floorboards, or at the door of a walk-in pantry whose shelves were lined with sacks and canisters. Some or even all of these might very well have contained food, but enough of them were jiggling by themselves on the shelf or even making little squeaking noises that he had no interest in closer investigation.

What was even more odd was how some of the rooms disappeared right in front of him, or seemed to, especially those that had windows to the outside world. He would spot a wash of sky peeking through at the far end of a series of linked, open rooms, but when he got to the last room he would find himself looking into another corridor with no window or in fact anything remotely sky-colored in sight. Once he found a sort of parlor room with big, low couches that had a picture window covering one entire wall — he could see an expanse of forested green hill, its crest just touched by the last slanting rays of sunlight, the clouds beginning to turn salmon-pink above it. But when he stepped into the room, the entire window was gone, replaced by a slab of polished black stone. Thinking it might be some kind of polarization trick, he stepped back to the entranceway of the room again, but although the light now gleamed very attractively off the polished surface, it was still opaque black.

Are they trying to keep me from seeing out? Or someone else from seeing me?

He could often hear people talking but could never find any of them. Once he even thought he heard Applecore's clear, high-pitched voice behind a cloth hanging, as though she were in a room just on the other side, but when he swept it back he found nothing but a wall of pale tiles. He heard voices that sounded like the slow, harsh cadences of the ogres, and others stranger still, but they all seemed to float to him from no discernible direction. A few times he wondered if there might be some air-conditioning ducts hidden in the wide wooden roof beams, piping not just air but sound from one part of the house to the other, but if such things did exist, they were hidden beyond his capacity to spot them.

When the lights suddenly dimmed and then went out, Theo had a moment of pure terror. He stopped, as rigid as a mouse when the cat door pops open. The darkness surrounded him like something tangible, something thick, but the abrupt, total silence was even thicker — no whispers, no dull, barely audible humming, just the silence of premature burial. He was suddenly all too aware that he was a stranger in a completely alien place.

Do they have regular blackouts here? He didn't dare move. Or does it mean something worse? A picture from one of his childhood books came to him, Theseus in the dark labyrinth, unaware of the brute Minotaur looming behind him.

He had no idea how long it took until the lights in the hallway came up again, but it was longer than he would have liked: the renewal of the phantom voices was as comforting as hearing the kindly neighbors in the next apartment come home.

The return of light and noise did not solve his other problems. He wandered on through rooms that would thrill the editors of Architectural Digest while confounding any actual architects, found singing shower-fountains in bathrooms made of what seemed like living but unbarked wood, discovered carpets so thick that they seemed to cling to his feet as if unwilling to let him leave and chattered to him in soft voices he could not quite make out, but still could not find a kitchen, or his own room again, or in fact any other living souls that he could recognize as such.

Panicked into a desperation beyond any fear of embarrassment, he stopped and began to shout: "Applecore? Applecore!" If that truly had been the sprite's voice he had heard earlier through a solid tile wall, why shouldn't his own travel the same way? "Applecore? Where are you? Hello! Anyone?"

"What do you want?" asked a feminine voice, cool and collected as a stewardess reciting safety information to a planeload of bored commuters. Theo looked around, but except for a table with an ornamental tree in a rectangular vase, he was alone in the hallway.

"Where are you?" he asked the tree, just in case.

"In the house." As far as he could tell, the calm voice came out of thin air. "Do you need help?"

"Yes, yes I think I do. Who are you?"

"I am the hob," the voice said. "I live in the house. You are one of Count Tansy's guests. How can I help you?"

Jesus, was that all it took? I wish I'd thought of this earlier. "Can you help me find my way? Like, back to my room, if I wanted?"

"Certainly." It seemed unimpressed, as though it were not quite worth its disembodied time to handle such simple requests.

"How about outside?"

"Outside the house?" Now the dainty voice sounded a bit irritated. "I'm sorry, you can't leave the house without Count Tansy."

"Oh." Well, that told him something, anyway. Maybe a bit more than he wanted to know. "How about the kitchen? Can you give me directions to the kitchen?"

"You wish to walk there?"

Theo frowned. "What are my alternatives — rocket skates? Light rail? Yeah, if it's close, I'll walk."

"I could bring it to you if you prefer."

That just plain sounded weird. "No, that's okay, I'll walk."

"Very well. Go forward until you reach the end of this hallway. Turn right, then turn right again immediately."

"Cool. Thanks."

"Enjoy your visit."

He hadn't sensed her arriving, if that was what she'd done, but he did sense her going. It was an odd departure, something barely perceived, like a light going out in a building he'd been watching while thinking of something else.

It's all magic, he thought. This whole world works on magic. And I don't understand any of it. Man, I'm in trouble here.

Even with the directions, he had to retrace his steps three times before he found the kitchen, because he did not at first realize that turn right at the end of the corridor, then turn right again immediately meant just that. After he had gone up and down the close-ended corridor several times looking for a place to make the second right when there clearly was no such place, he tried to be a bit more literal. He went back to the ornamental tree, then walked to the end of the hall again. As soon as he had made the right turn into the corridor he immediately turned right once more, bracing against the smack in the nose he expected when he hit the wall. But suddenly there was no wall there.

The kitchen was a high room of pale stone and dark floor tiles, huge and warm, agleam with hanging brass pots and pans. At the far end a small bristly figure on a stool was leaning over a huge shiny stovetop, alternating between shouting up into the rafters and doing something that looked like conducting opera. Nearer stood a long refectory table. There were only a few people sitting at it, less than a dozen, but it looked like a lot more because two of them were ogres.

"Hoy! Pinkie!" shouted Dolly. Her voice made the crockery vibrate in the hutches.

"There goes the neighborhood," rumbled Teddybear.

As Theo stood warily in the doorway the ogres' companions turned and examined him with interest. They were the size of small children, round-faced and more or less human, dressed in matching gray uniforms that gave the scene the air of break time at some Munchkinland fast food restaurant. The little people had long, curling eyebrows and the males — Theo thought he was on fairly solid ground here — sported wide, fluffy beards.

"Can… can I come in?" he asked.

"Course you can," said Dolly cheerfully. "We were just telling the others about you."

"You were." Teddybear belched, a drawn-out noise like a garbage truck hefting a Dumpster. "I was eatin'."

"The lights went out." It was strange to be relieved to see anything as ugly as the ogre siblings. "Or did that happen only where I was?"

"Happens all the time these days," said Teddybear. "Power plant workers having a little holiday or something. Somebody needs to grind a few of those lazy bastards into jelly."

"You hungry?" Dolly asked Theo.

"Not for jelly," he said. "Not now."

"Come join us." She gestured for him to sit next to her and pulled a basket full of bread closer to the edge of the table. She elbowed her brother to move over, leaving a tiny sliver of bench between the massive gray bodies. The little people watched avidly as Theo wiggled into the space.

It's like taking my bike in between two semis, he thought. If either one of 'em twitches, I'll be nothing but a smear. He settled in gingerly. "Yeah, actually I am sort of hungry."

"Are you allowed to eat?" the ogress asked as the little people whispered among themselves.

"Allowed?"

"Isn't there something about mortals eating our food and then their heads blow up or something?"

"What?"

Teddybear shook his head. "Gah, Doll, you talk a load of old fewmets sometimes. Their heads don't blow up — that's silly. They turn purple all over and die. And it's not just from eating — it happens even if they just put some stone in their mouth or even just jump over some branches. Mortals can die from doing just about anything here."

Theo, who had been reaching for a piece of bread, pulled back his hand. "What are you talking about? Is this a joke?"

One of the little people on the far side of the table stood up on the bench so his head was on the same level as Theo's. "They're giving you a bad time, Stepstool." He sounded like he'd just won the helium-breathing finals. "Mortals don't die from eating our food, they just can't go back to Mortalia again."

"Mortalia?" one of the others asked.

"Where mortals come from," the first little man explained smugly.

"What the hell does a brownie know?" demanded Teddybear. He sounded angry, but considering that he could have stuffed half a dozen of the little people into his mouth at one time, they didn't seem very alarmed. "You're all idiots. Our mum told us the story. All about this mortal boy named Percy Faun, and how he covered himself with grease so he could slip through the door to here from… from the mortal place. He ate some pommy granite and died."

"Mortals don't eat rocks, sodskull." Dolly rolled her eyes. "Do they, Pinkie? You don't eat rocks, do you?"

Theo's hands were now in his lap. Despite the cramping of his empty stomach, he didn't want to touch anything that might be food. His head blowing up might be a fitting end to a very difficult day, but although he doubted that would really happen, he didn't feel like taking any chances — especially with the possibility of not being able to go home. "No," he said. "No, we don't eat rocks."

"All right, it wasn't granite then," said Teddybear. "Miss Clever. But it was something like that. He ate it, then he tried to go home but he fell over some sticks and died."

"You said they turned purple," Dolly pointed out. "Mortals, I mean."

"Fell over some sticks, turned purple, then died."

Theo could only sit and listen to his stomach rumble while they argued over the top of him. The brownies seemed to think it was all very funny.

13 A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

"Of course you can bloody well eat," Applecore informed him as she led him down the hall from the kitchen toward Tansy's lab. "What else are you going to do, ya thick, live on air?"

"But… but the ogres said…"

"Ogres!" She buzzed across the antechamber so briskly he almost had to run to keep up. "There's a reason Tansy didn't send one of them after you, you know. Even Dolly, and she's a bleedin' genius by ogre standards, couldn't find her arse with both hands and a treasure map. And our Teddy can't count to eleven without unbuttoning his trousers." She gave him a tiny shove toward the door into the lab. Inside his host stood waiting, arms crossed on his chest. "He hasn't eaten anything since he's been here, sir," Applecore announced, "because the ogres have been giving him some old shite about how it will keep him from getting home again."

"What?" Tansy appeared startled, as if he had been miles away. "Oh, he hasn't eaten?" He spoke to the air. "Fetch in some food for Master Vilmos."

"Certainly, Count Tansy," said the sweetly reasonable hob-voice.

"I'm very sorry," Tansy told Theo. "When you first arrived, I was quite… absorbed. I should have asked you if you had eaten. Terrible way to treat a guest. My apologies."

Theo could not help staring. A few hours earlier the fairy had looked at him like he was a bug. Now he was treating him like a real guest. What the hell was that about? "I… I just…" It took a moment to shake off his surprise. "Dolly and her brother, they told me that if I eat here, I can't go back. It's some old story, apparently."

Tansy nodded. "It's just that, I'm afraid — an old story. I have no doubt it has some basis in truth, mind you. I would guess that in the old days, when there was little to inhibit travel between your lands and ours, it was easier for a mortal to dally here and forget to cross back, so that by the time he returned the slippage would have meant a terrible dislocation on his return."

"Slippage?"

"Yes, the differences between our two worlds. The passage of time is perhaps the most obvious symptom, but not the only one. But eating or not eating has nothing to do with whether or not a traveler may return, then or now. I suspect it was a sort of ploy devised by wise mortals to keep your kind from staying here too long. If they left without eating, and hence only stayed as long as they could last on an empty stomach, the disruption would not be too great."

"Disruption?"

A female brownie had walked silently into the room wheeling a cart with a tray on it — at least, Theo assumed she'd walked, although he hadn't actually seen her enter. She was plump and rosy-cheeked and quite ordinary in her proportions, as though someone had simply shrunk a slightly short-legged young woman to about three and a half feet high. "Where, sir?" she asked.

Tansy nodded toward a low table.

The brownie put the tray of fruit and bread on a table, dropped a curtsy, then pushed her cart back out of the room. The fairy-lord gestured for Theo to take the leather-cushioned chair next to the table, which had a casual elegance that suggested it was Tansy's own. Theo seated himself, a little apprehensively. Applecore squatted down beside the plate, sniffing. "Ooh, eglantine honey," she said. "That's nice, but."

"Help yourself." He turned back to Tansy. "So it's really all right if I eat?" He didn't want to be stubborn, but it was hard to believe the cool-eyed creature of a few hours earlier was suddenly itching to be his buddy-old-pal. "I'll still be able to go back home?"

"Eating this or any other wholesome food will have no effect on whether or not you can go back," Tansy said. "I swear by the Oldest Trees."

Theo looked to Applecore for a clue as to what was going on, but she didn't seem worried for him. In fact, she was scooping huge dollops of butter and honey off his bread with her hands and licking them off, so the food certainly wasn't poisoned or anything that crude.

"What did he call you, a sprite?" Theo asked her. "Is the definition by any chance, 'Mouth like a sailor, manners like a tiny flying pig'?"

She grinned behind a smear of honey. "Shut up and eat, you great big waster."

He broke off a corner of bread and picked a fruit that looked like a salmon-colored cherry. The bread tasted like bread (only much better) but the fruit was like nothing else he'd ever had, the bold sweetness undercut by a certain perfumed tang — a wonderful, exotic flavor. He was reminded again that he was starvingly hungry and he scooped up a whole handful.

"As I said, I'm very sorry for my earlier… abruptness," Tansy proclaimed. "I was preoccupied. But I have given the matter more thought and realized that it is still important for my principals to meet you, and also that you should not be left to fend for yourself in what must be a very disconcerting new world."

Theo still didn't trust the situation. Tansy was fairly convincing as a nice guy but it was hard to ignore the earlier behavior; Theo couldn't help wondering what might have happened during the course of the day to change things. Or was that just what these Flowers were like, these high-powered fairy-folk — able to shut off or turn on simulated emotions at will, like real-world sociopaths? It wasn't the most comfortable thought.

Either I'm paranoid or they're totally freaky. Two great choices.

"Could you just send me back instead?" he asked. "I mean, no offense, but I didn't want to come here in the first place. I really don't need to meet anyone…"

"Ah, but you do." Tansy smiled brightly. Theo thought for a disturbing moment that the ascetic, white-haired creature was going to walk over and chummily thump him on the back. "Surely you haven't forgotten about the spirit who found you in your home and attacked you."

"Not much chance of that."

"That sort of entity will not be long thrown off your scent, and could not be avoided forever even if you could cross back and forth between your world and ours every day. As it is, once you have settled back down into your normal life again it will easily find you. And next time you will not have Mistress Applecore to help you, or a door through which to escape."

Theo remembered the thing's raw face and oozing eyes; he suddenly felt clammy under the arms. "So what are you saying? That it's just going… going to get me someday? No matter what?"

"We hope not. But it will take a more cunning mind than mine, or a better equipped laboratory, to find exactly what the thing is and remove it or placate it. That is another reason why you should go to my friends in the City. They are better connected than I am, closer to the seats of power… and that means all sorts of power. I have chosen the life of a poor country philosopher and scientist, you see."

"You said, 'Another reason.' What's the first reason?" Theo suddenly wondered if Tansy or his allies might have set the corpse-thing on him themselves, just to make sure he did what they wanted. "Why me? You said there were these, I don't know, groups. Political parties. And one of them wanted to talk to me or something. Why?"

"I am not at liberty to disclose too much, in case you…" Tansy hesitated, then began again. "You see, you will have to travel a long way, and…" Apparently deciding this was just as unproductive a tangent, he pulled a stool out from behind one of the equipment-covered tables and sat down on it, his long legs bent at the knees. He wore what looked like very expensive fawn suede slippers, with no socks. "Let me explain a little." He pulled out his glasses and put them on, then leaned over to look at a display on one of his desktop instruments. He waved his hand over it and the screen changed from silvery to a sparkling blue-green; a cloud of mist drifted up from the screen but quickly evaporated as he turned back to Theo and Applecore.

"Your race, Master Vilmos, and my race have lived in each other's shadows a long, long time. Not always in harmony, it has to be said. When we first noted the rise of your kind, there were some of our folk who thought we should…" He paused.

"Thought you should what?" Theo demanded. "Wipe us out like bugs?"

Tansy waved a negligent hand. "Let's not get sidetracked."

"Sidetracked? Like, that's a small matter?"

"The fact is, despite early doubts, our two races have managed to share the world a long time — not the world as you know it, I should make clear, but the world as we both know it. It is not really one world, you see. They overlap. Or, rather, they coexist, your world and our world, although not always in the physical plane."

"Physical plane? Overlapping worlds?" Theo was irritated by Tansy skipping over what was clearly an important part of the story, namely the actual desire of some fairies to bump off all the humans. He was being treated like a child, which made him want to act like one on purpose. "This is beginning to sound like astrology or something," he said, slouching back in the chair. "I hate that stuff. I had a girlfriend once who was always telling me that I was retrograde or something when what she really meant was that I was being an asshole."

Tansy's smile regained a little of its earlier wintry chill. "Yes. Well. Without going into too much detail, in deference to your undoubted fatigue, suffice it to say that while our two races used to share the physical and metaphysical bounty of the world very closely, we have grown apart over the years and our needs have changed. I suppose the easiest way to say it is that your people now take much more from the earth than we do — and I am not talking about the spinning globe, the actual planet with its topsoil and air, but about something a bit more intangible. In a way, it is like two towns built on the same lake. Your town has begun to pump away a far larger share of the clean water, and to return those waters to the lake fouled."

"This is about pollution?" He bit down on a pit and grimaced. None of the other fairy-fruits had contained pits. He spat it out carefully into his hand and put it on the corner of the plate. Applecore, who had eaten quite a bit of honey and a few berries, rose unsteadily into the air and lit on Theo's shoulder.

"Nothing so simplistic or so… physical…" said Tansy, "but the analogy may stand. Let us say simply that you mortals are overutilizing and befouling our shared environment." He leaned back in his chair and looked over the tops of his glasses. "It has a great deal to do with changing beliefs."

"Huh?"

"Changing beliefs, or more specifically, the diminishing of belief in what you call magic in your world, and which we think of as the true science. There have been several nexus points when things have changed in both worlds, some of them you would undoubtedly recognize as important milestones in your own world, when things have grown rapidly and significantly worse here. Most of these nexus points have had to do with voyages of discovery or moments of human innovation, but some simply with the brutalization of imagination there and the atrophy of childhood. Each point significantly changed your world and simultaneously reduced the power available to us here, and thus made our lives harder and emptier. Your last hundred years have been the worst of all for us.

"When it was realized what was happening, several changes came to our society. One was that we began to try new methods to use our resources more effectively, forcing us in a way to ape your race's path — what you call 'progress.' Another was that debating how to respond to these changes became the dominant political issue of our society, at least among those of us farsighted enough to recognize the problem."

"Or those with time on their hands because they don't have to work for a living," Applecore whispered loudly in Theo's ear. Oddly, she sounded a little tipsy, although he hadn't seen her drink even water.

"Thus," Tansy continued, "we have our major parties in this disagreement. First there are the Symbiotes, who believe that the continued rise of humanity is inevitable and that we must therefore find a way to live in the shadow of your race and subsist on your leavings — much like certain birds and fish who clean the hides or teeth of larger and more dangerous animals. The Symbiotes themselves put a braver face on it, but it is really nothing more than parasitism."

"He's talking about those Creepers I told you about," whispered Applecore.

"Then there are the extremists on the opposite side, those who believe there can be no accommodation with a race like yours — with a species that does not even recognize what it is on the verge of destroying. These are the Excisors." He frowned at Applecore. "The 'Chokeweeds,' as commoners call them."

"Yep." She giggled. "Chokeweeds!"

"The Excisors believe the only solution is to remove ourselves from the influence of your kind entirely. To be fair, there are some few in this group — scientists and philosophers for whom I have respect — who would like to find a way simply to separate your race and ours so that we could each live unaffected by the other, but they are the minority. Most of the rest would like to destroy, disrupt, or subjugate your civilization. Lately they seem to be losing patience with the normal and legitimate workings of the Parliament of Blooms. It is feared that they may even seek a more direct confrontation with those of us who disagree."

Theo was doing his best to make sense of this — it was similar to what Applecore had told him, but had more long words in it. "And you're part of which group… ?"

"As I said before, I think, I am one of the Coextensives — believers in a middle path. We feel we must find a way to live with your kind, but not necessarily simply by giving in. We have been active in various small ways even in your world, influencing events where we can. We have some surprisingly well-connected friends."

"Rich mortal loonies," Applecore whispered loudly, then laughed so hard that she slipped off Theo's shoulder and had to beat her wings hard to keep from falling to the floor. She hovered near his elbow, still chortling. "Humans who want… to believe… in fairies!" She did a midair loop. "Eejits!"

Theo looked at her, worried.

"Oh, by the name of…" Tansy stared at Applecore's oscillating flight. "Hob? Hob? When were those berries picked?"

"Last autumn, sir," the bodiless voice responded. "When they were ripe."

"Curses. The fermentation pixies must have gotten into them, at least enough to make the sprite here drunk as a selkie on shore leave." He got up and walked over to one of the standing cabinets, then pulled open the drawer. "There, you wayward dot, there is a pile of towels. Lie down and sleep it off."

Applecore bumbled around near Theo's face for a moment. "Not much weight, see," she said. "Me, I mean. Don't take much… that's what all the boys say…" She hiccuped. "Don't let him give you any of those berries," she told Theo in a stage whisper. "They're mad!" The sprite flew unsteadily toward the drawer and disappeared into it. Within moments Theo could hear a soft but incredibly high-pitched snore, like someone drawing a bow back and forth above the bridge of a violin.

"Well, after that interruption, I've forgotten what I was saying." Tansy shook his head.

"Something about the party you support… ?"

"Ah, the Coextensives. Well, we have our own agenda, but we definitely eschew the extremes. Desperate, violent measures are not needed. Not yet, anyway, and not for the foreseeable future. But neither can we simply let our destinies be written by other hands."

Theo heard the unmistakable beginnings of a party political commercial. "But what about me? Where do I fit into all this?"

Tansy swiveled toward him, clearly annoyed, then carefully made his face neutral again. "Ah, yes. You, Master Vilmos."

So he's not that good at hiding his feelings, after all, Theo decided. Or else he's playing an even weirder game than I thought.

"I can't tell you what my contacts want of you — and that is not by my choice," the fairy added hurriedly. "It is because I do not know. Some of the most important members of Parliament are involved, both Coextensives and Symbiotes, and they have not made me privy to the substance of their interest. But they want to see you."

"It's probably about my great-uncle's book," Theo said. "Why don't you just give that to them? If they're happy with it, then they can let me go home."

Tansy shook his head. "Sadly, it does not work that way. My orders were explicit — to send you to the City where they could meet with you in person. They were… most forceful about that."

Theo suddenly realized that Tansy's change of attitude might have come about because he had talked with these superior, powerful folk and they had let him know that they very much still wanted to see Theo, late or not. Which means what? That I have a little power in this situation? But if so, he didn't want to waste it with Tansy, who (whether or not he was faking this newfound courtesy) was beginning to seem like a mere functionary.

"So I have to go?"

Tansy nodded, almost a small bow. "I regret it, but yes, you must."

"But they killed the first person who was coming to escort me, you said. Someone definitely killed him. How am I going to find this place I'm supposed to go to, and how am I going to get past whatever killed that Hollyhock guy? And what if that dead thing comes after me again?"

"Yes, those are all problems. I have been thinking on the matter carefully. To show you how seriously I take this situation, and how I regret my earlier behavior — I really was very distracted, as I believe I told you — I will send a member of my own family with you."

"Thanks, but I think I'd rather have one of the ogres. They may not be the best company, but I bet nobody would f…" He paused to rephrase. "I bet nobody would mess with me if I had an ogre along."

Tansy shook his head. "Oh, no, most unsuitable. For one thing, they are needed here. They are personal bodyguards on loan to me from my brother — not to mention that they are of great help moving equipment here in the lab. For another, you betray your ignorance of our society. To travel with ogres in attendance is to signal yourself part of the highest Flower nobility and thus to attract attention. Someone would very quickly wonder why an unknown like you could afford two such large and dangerous servants."

"Oh, and they won't notice me without them?"

"Not if you wear the proper clothes and we make some other adjustments to disguise your appearance as well. Mostly it is your color, that brash, brownish tone to your skin. It makes you look like a laborer."

"Well, that describes my general position in society pretty well. If you add 'boneheaded' and 'ungrateful' to it."

Tansy gave him a sour look. "I will have all the details seen to, so there is no need for worry. I will send someone to help you with disguising yourself."

"Okay, we hide my tan so people think I'm an ordinary middle-class fairy." Theo shook his head. "This all makes me feel like this trip is going to be a little more dangerous than you've been letting on. Who's this relative you're going to send with me?"

"Do not worry, Master Vilmos — it will be easier than you fear. Come to me in the morning when you are up and dressed and we will finish the preparations." Tansy turned his back on Theo and then seemed to remember himself. "Can you find your way back to your room by yourself, Master Vilmos? Hob can take you straight there or give you directions."

"That would help. Otherwise you might never see me again."

"Yes, that's true." He said it quite seriously. "By the way, would you take this inebriated sprite with you? I have work to do."

Theo picked Applecore out of the drawer and cradled her in his hand. Her little eyes opened blearily for a moment, then she let out a minuscule belch, smiled, and went back to sleep.

"They are like starlings," said Tansy, frowning. "Never silent, and rude as can be."

Theo felt an urge to defend his only friend in this otherworldly place, but from his own experience he had to admit the fairy lord was speaking the truth.

"Ow!"

"Hold still — you wouldn't want me to pull your face off by accident, would you?"

When an ogre said something like that to you, even a comparatively friendly one like Dolly, you paid attention. Theo held still. "So you're the expert Tansy said he'd send to make me up, huh? Ow! Careful, you're smashing my nose!"

"By the Oldest Trees!" groaned Applecore, slumped on the bedside table. "Can you two not talk without shouting at the top of your bleeding lungs!"

"Someone's hungover," said Dolly, grinning. "It's funny when the wee ones drink."

"Ha ha," agreed Applecore. "You great gray shower of shite."

Theo didn't say anything at all because Dolly was rubbing white cream onto his face — and right through his skin onto the bones, it felt like — with a gray thumb the size and texture of an unpeeled avocado. For a moment he thought she'd pushed his lips all the way around to the side of his head, then he realized they'd just gone numb from the pressure. "What the hell is that stuff?" he asked when she let up for a moment.

"White lead," Dolly told him. "It's what I always use when I want to look like I don't have to work for a living."

"Lead! That's poisonous, isn't it? Do you want to kill me?" Theo tried to struggle away.

"No, not after all the work I've done on you," Dolly told him. "But I'd be happy to pinch your face up until everyone thinks you're a Stroke Boy, then it won't matter what color you are."

"It's too high up here," Applecore announced and flew unsteadily down from the bedside table to the floor, where she began walking in eccentric circles like a smoke-stunned yellow jacket. "I feel like death, don't I," she moaned. "How could you let me do that?"

"Let you? I didn't even know it was happening." Theo turned his head to peer at the clock, then remembered he couldn't read it. "What time is it?"

"What are you looking at that for?" the ogre asked.

"Isn't it a clock?" They both looked blank. "You know, a thing to tell time?"

"A thing to tell time what?" Dolly looked at Applecore, who shrugged, uninterested in anything but the pain in her head. "My, you pink folk do have strange ideas. No, it's a charm-casket."

Theo tried to rub some blood back into his temples, where he felt certain he now had ogre-prints the size of beer coasters. "What the hell is a charm-casket?"

"Just something that will give you any little charms or cantrips you might need — direction-finders or hair-straighteners or love-stiffeners." She poked his side until he squeaked. "That what you were looking for, Pinkie?"

"Jeez. No wonder I almost burned the place down trying to get the radio to play. So how do you tell what time it is?"

"Those big round things in the sky." Dolly smirked. "Sun? Moon? You may have seen them."

"Okay, so I'm ignorant. We do it differently back home. Just tell me what time it is, will you?"

"Sunwise it's midmorning," Applecore declared. "You can tell because the light is pure poison and it stabs into your eyes like knives." She found a spot back against the wall. "Also because it's the time of day when ogres and mortals talk the most shite. Oog. Even my hair hurts."

"There," said Dolly. "I think he's done. Not top quality, but what can you expect?"

"I'm sure you did the best you could," Theo said generously, looking for a mirror.

"I'm talking about you, not the paint-up." Dolly smacked him with a powder puff until he was choking, then brushed off the excess with astonishing gentleness. "All done. Here." She reached into a pocket of the voluminous something-or-other she wore and produced a surprisingly small hand mirror; it seemed no bigger than a poker chip in her huge gray paw. For a moment Theo wondered why she would carry such a small thing, then realized that mirrors for ogres must not be very commonly made — for obvious reasons. She'd taken a fairy-sized mirror and made it her own. As he took it from her he was suddenly and uncomfortably full of what felt like pity.

He definitely looked… different. Dolly had curled his longish brown hair and put something in it that made it look more golden. The white grease had been applied with more care than it had felt like from his end, rubbed in until it made his skin seem palely translucent. That and a subtle brushing of rouge brought out his cheekbones and narrow nose — his "Vulcan features" as Cat used to call them.

"I look… okay," he said. "Not perfect, but… surprisingly realistic."

"You're very welcome," said Dolly.

"Sorry. Thanks, yeah."

"Oog," said Applecore. "Does that mean I have to drag myself up now? Or can I take another few minutes and get on with dying?"

As Theo pulled on the clothes that Tansy had sent for him, a pair of boots and some loose and serviceable earth-toned garments that he doubted came from the lord's own closets, but more likely had been commandeered from one of the more human-shaped servants, Dolly continued to admire her handiwork. "You do look rather sweet, if I say so myself." She grinned hugely, revealing teeth like crooked shower tiles. "How about a kiss for good luck then, Theo-lad?"

Theo was seized with panic, but it was a strangely familiar panic, the fear of someone who wanted things to be easy when they never, never were. "You know," he said after a long moment, "I'm really grateful that you did this and all, but… but you're not really my type, Dolly. Sorry."

She looked at him and her smile tightened. "You don't have much of a sense of humor, do you, Pinkie?" She stood up; her head almost touched the low ceiling. For a terrifying moment Theo thought she was going to wad him up like a candy bar wrapper. "In fact, I think you're a bit shallow, you know that?" She turned to Applecore. "See you when you get back from the station." She left the room with elephantine dignity.

"She's right, but," said the sprite, rising up from the floor like a helicopter with a bent rotor. "She didn't mean nothing by it — she was only messing. You must be a deft hand with the ladies back home."

"Yeah, whatever. I'm sorry. Aren't we supposed to be meeting Tansy?" It was bad enough having everyone back in the real world look at him like he was a complete loser — now it was starting to happen to him in Fairyland as well.

"Oh, 'course, wouldn't want to hold you up." She sounded angry.

As they walked down the hall — a different hall, Theo felt sure, but it had taken the place of the one that had been outside his door the previous night — he suddenly caught up to Dolly's parting comment. "What did she mean, 'see you when you get back from the station'?"

"Just because you act like an utter mean eejit sometimes doesn't mean I wouldn't see you off," Applecore said quietly. "I'm not spiteful, meself."

"You mean… you're not going with me?"

"Go with you? Back to the City? That's why Tansy's sending one of his relatives with you. What good would I be? Besides, this is where my family lives, I'm just back, and I owe my ma and da a good long visit."

"Oh." He was a bit stunned — no, worse than that: he was devastated. He had taken it for granted that Applecore would go with him.

By the time they reached Tansy's lab Theo was feeling very depressed and could barely muster the strength to respond to the count's greeting. Another fairy was with him, one who seemed somehow a bit younger (as far as could be told with such ageless faces) and was certainly a bit plumper, which meant he was built like a slender mortal. And he actually smiled, although he did not go so far as to extend his hand to Theo.

"This is my cousin, Rufinus weft-Daisy," Tansy explained as he led them across the house. The day was dark outside the long windows, the sky streaked with charcoal-colored clouds. "He's going to accompany you to the city."

"Rather exciting it will be, too," said Rufinus. "Quite secretive. Like the old days of the last Flower War."

Tansy gave him an irritated look. "Something which you were not yet alive to see. In any case, let's not have any talk like that where outsiders can hear. It won't do to set people thinking."

"Yes, yes, certainly." Rufinus gave a vigorous nod. "Quite right, Cousin Quillius."

Oh, my God, Theo thought miserably. I'm going off into horrible danger with an Upper-Class Twit for a bodyguard.

"Now, in just a moment Heath will bring the coach around to take you to the station…"

"Coach?"

"… And thus," Tansy told Theo sternly, "we do not have much time for chat. Cousin Rufinus will have ways of getting in touch with me, but on the very small chance that you two should become separated, I suppose you should be able to reach me, too. Using public communications may not be feasible, so…" — he reached into the breast pocket of his white coat — "… I want you to have this."

Theo stared dumbly at the tiny leather case for a moment. At last, since it seemed expected of him, he flicked it open. A piece of golden filigree lay cushioned in the velvet interior, a slightly abstract sculpture of a bird about the width and length of two extended fingers. "What… what is it?" he asked at last.

"It is what we call a shell. It will give your words wings," said Tansy complacently. "Open the case and speak to it when you are in dire need and I will speak back to you."

"Oh. It's kind of like… a cellular phone?"

Tansy frowned ever so slightly. "It is a scientific instrument. Treat it with respect." He regained his bonhomie as they reached the large, sand-colored entry hall whose main feature was a sweeping minimalist staircase. Theo hadn't realized the house had an upper story. If in fact it did. "Hob," Tansy said, "has Heath come with the coach?"

"He is waiting in the courtyard."

"Then your adventure is just about to begin, Master Vilmos." Tansy smiled. He was pretty good at it, but still not quite convincing. "Come — I will show you the way to the front doors."

My adventure? Theo could not help remembering other great euphemisms of the past, such as a high-school girlfriend telling him that breaking up would be "a learning experience."

The dark clouds had rolled in overhead, turning morning's glow to a midday twilight and filling the air with the wet smell of an approaching storm. It seemed to match the change for the worse in Theo's mood. If he had half-hoped that Dolly and Teddybear and some of the other household folk would come out to bid him farewell, he was disappointed. In fact, even Tansy did not seem to want to linger too long in the outside air. As they piled into the back of the coach, which turned out to be something that looked just like a slightly old-fashioned beige town car, indistinguishable (except for some extravagant bits of silver and gold ornament) from a vehicle that Theo might have seen idling in a pickup lane at San Francisco Airport during his boyhood, Tansy spoke quickly.

"You'll do fine. Rufinus knows just where to go — don't you, Rufinus?"

"Most certainly, Cousin." Young weft-Daisy laughed in a confident sort of way.

Theo shook his head in a mixture of confusion and resignation. He had many more questions to ask, but Applecore was crawling across his shoulder trying to get onto one of the backseat headrests and Rufinus was bashing him painfully in the shins with a huge suitcase he had dragged into the car. By the time Theo had figured out what was going on, Tansy had already slammed the door and retreated into the house, which looked much more normally shaped on the outside than he would ever have dreamed, a long modernist manor of pale stone, pagoda roofs, and not-quite-transparent glass.

Theo flinched as a nightmarish face peered in on Rufinus' side of the car. It had a long, horselike muzzle and was a sort of pearly gray-green, a skin color that went nicely with its crisp navy blue suit and cap. It had huge nostrils but no eyes. "Can I take that bag for you, governor?" it asked Rufinus. The arms that came through the car window ended in gloved hands rather than hooves, although the fingers were thick and spatulate. "I'll put it in the back."

"Most kind, Heath," said the young fairy with lordly condescension. "Just that one — I'll keep the smaller one with me."

When the strange greenish creature had disappeared around toward the trunk of the car, Theo let out his breath. "What… what is he?"

"Too loud by half," growled Applecore from her perch on top of the headrest as Heath thumped the suitcase into the trunk. The sprite was apparently still feeling the effects of her overindulgence.

Rufinus leaned toward Theo. "Of course, you're a stranger here. Heath is a doonie. They are terrible ones for the drink, doonies — fermented mare's milk is their tipple, don't you know — but extremely loyal. And they're excellent drivers, of course."

"Excellent… ? But he doesn't have any eyeballs!"

"Ah, but he smells extremely well."

"I've smelled better." Applecore was lying back with her eyes closed. "Ooh, the bleeding Trees, me head still throbs."

"Oh… my… God," Theo said quietly to himself as the chauffeur with no eyes climbed into the front seat and pulled out of the courtyard and its circular road, tires spitting gravel.

Oddly enough, Heath did indeed prove to be a very good driver; after a few minutes, even Theo had to admit that perhaps vision was an overrated commodity in the chauffeur business. Whether it was his excellent sense of smell that allowed him to do it, or some other strange trick beyond Theo's understanding, he kept squarely to the middle of the country lanes, made the turns without anyone shouting, "Hey, you, go right!" and stopped in plenty of time for processions of small strange animals Theo largely didn't recognize to cross the road in front of them.

Applecore had slid down from the headrest and crawled across the seat to find a more stable spot to sleep off her headache, curled on top of Rufinus' coat. The young fairy lord had opened his valise, which seemed to be a sort of laptop computer or the equivalent, though what it looked like was a shallow box full of mercury that eddied and rippled but somehow never spilled over the edges. Tansy's cousin watched its sparkling movements avidly and closely, talking and even laughing to himself, waving his fingers above it.

"Reading my mail," he explained when he saw Theo staring.

The skies stopped merely threatening and began more active intimidation. The first drops of rain splattered against the windshield like fat rotten berries and within moments Heath had set the windshield wipers ticking back and forth. Outside whatever beauty made this Fairyland as opposed to just Any-Old-Land was obscured by gray light and swirling rains.

In other circumstances Theo might have wondered why a blind driver needed windshield wipers, but at the moment he was using all his energy just being miserable.

It was nothing so simple as homesickness, although he was feeling that in spades, or even simple terror, which was in excellent supply as well. Dolly's remark about his shallowness was working away in the pit of his stomach. Was it true? Even Applecore was so disenchanted with him that she wasn't going to cut short a visit with her folks to spend time with him.

So I'm supposed to be a hero, a diplomat, what? I didn't ask to come here. I didn't ask to have any of this happen. Just because I've got the brains to say, "This sucks" instead of pretending it's some kind of wonderful fairy-tale trip, does that make me a bad guy?

Cat's pale face hovered in his thoughts, her dogged determination to add to the legend of Theo the Useless even from her hospital bed: "It's always the same. You're thirty years old but you act like a teenager. The shit you start and never finish. Your going-nowhere job…"

He had to concede a few points, but he wasn't ready to give in completely. Besides, when people said you were acting like a teenager, didn't that usually mean they were jealous because you had more freedom than they did? Was having an all-consuming job you didn't like very much, like Cat's, somehow proof of being a grown-up, or proof of having given up on the possibility of better things?

Well, nobody has to worry about my own going-nowhere job, because I don't have it anymore. And as for going nowhere in general, I've certainly gone somewhere now, haven't I? He sighed.

The horselike face of Heath the driver surveyed him in the rearview mirror — or seemed to: it was hard to tell with no eyes there to meet his. "You're the mortal, aren't you?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Not really. You smell a little foreign, but that's true with a lot of people who've been traveling, if you get what I mean."

"Yeah, I guess." Desperate for something to alleviate his gloom, Theo seized on the age-old diversion of Talking to the Driver. Suicidally bored mandarins probably did this with the rickshaw guys back in ancient China, he thought. "So how does someone get a job like yours?"

"Ah, you know, it's kind of in the family. My dad and granddad were both hackies. That's what we do, a lot of us."

"Doonies, you mean? Have I got that right?"

"Yeah, exactly. We all used to be road-guardians — each family would have their own patch and they'd take care of it, live off small offerings, reward good or kind travelers and punish bad ones, like that. Then the Flowers up in the City decided to begin building the Interdomain Highway System and… well, we doonies fought it. Organized ourselves, pleaded our case in front of the Parliament, you name it. I suppose a few roads might have got torn up as well." He shrugged, a gesture that looked strange until Theo realized he didn't have the same kind of shoulders as a human. "Anyway, we lost. Now the roads belong to all of Faerie, they say. Whatever that means. It don't mean doonies, I'll tell you that for free. So we made the best of it — it was a while ago. A lot of us started driving, like my granddad. We do like being near the roads, still."

There was a note of loss in his voice that Theo recognized very clearly. "And how long have you been driving for Count Tansy?"

"Well, not for him as such, y'see, but for the Daisy clan. Pretty much all my life. My dad hooked up with them in the old lord's day, would have been… six hundred years ago? Give or take a few decades."

Theo had to swallow before he could say anything else. "And how… how are they to work for?"

Heath darted a quick if eyeless glance at the other side of the mirror. Rufinus was still chortling to himself over his valise. "Oh, fine, fine. Better than most. Treat you pretty good, almost like one of the family."

"Urgh," said Applecore. She levered herself upright and peered blearily from the folds of Rufinus' coat, then clambered slowly onto Theo's leg and up his sleeve, her wings waggling slowly. "I feel like a bugbear just shat inside me skull." From her new perch on Theo's shoulder she squinted out the rainy window at the wet country lane. "Where are we? We've gone way past Oxeye Station."

"We're not going there," said Rufinus without looking up from his shimmering valise. "Cousin Quillius thought it would be a bad idea — that if someone should be looking for us, they'd certainly be looking for any trains coming into the terminal from Oxeye — it is the Daisy station, after all. So Heath is driving us all the way to Penumbra Station. It should be usefully crowded because of the holiday. It's Mabon the day after tomorrow," he said to Theo by way of explanation. "The trains will be very full."

"Fairy trains," said Theo, still not quite used to the idea, even while riding in a fairy limousine. "And what the hell is a Mabon?"

"Stop the coach," said Applecore suddenly. "Quick!"

"What?" Rufinus frowned. "You heard what I said — Cousin Quillius wants us to go all the way to…"

"Stop the coach!"

"Why?" asked Theo, beginning to panic. "What's wrong?"

"I'm going to be bloody sick, that's why!" groaned Applecore, then immediately proved it.

As Rufinus hurriedly opened the window and began flapping his hand to get some air into the backseat and counteract the slight but acrid smell, Applecore wiped her mouth with her arm and looked at the small mess she had made down the shoulder of Theo's jacket.

"Sorry," she said sullenly. "It was those be-damned berries."

Theo sighed and tried not to look at it. He was in a car being driven by a green pony-man with no eyes, he was spattered with cold rain and pixie barf, and was about to be deserted by his only friend so he could continue on to an unfamiliar city with a companion right out of a Monty Python sketch. He tried to imagine a way the words "fairy tale" could be stretched to this meaning without destroying it entirely. He failed.

"Yeah, well," he told Applecore. "One of those days, I guess."

14 PENUMBRA STATION

"You should be grateful you weren't wearing anything nice," Rufinus said solemnly as Theo used the rainwater-dampened handkerchief to remove the last of the spot Applecore had made. The fairy frowned. "If something like that happened to one of my Acanthus suits, I'd be perfectly murderous." The handkerchief was Heath's — even the thought of his own being used that way had sent Tansy's young cousin into shudders.

"Grateful. Yeah." Theo felt like he was hanging by his fingernails over a bottomless pit of bleakness.

"I didn't mean it to happen," Applecore said a touch defensively. "I told you to stop the coach, didn't I?"

Rufinus practically had his mouth pressed against the opening between window and doorframe where he sucked clean air as though he were trapped in a coal mine filling with deadly gas. "Yes, I suppose you did," he snapped. "But you could have been a bit clearer."

Theo was tired of their bickering and so depressed he felt like he might start screaming. Instead, he asked, "Where are we now?"

They were passing through something that looked almost like a suburban town, although it was a little different from the kind of places where Theo had grown up and spent most of his life. There were no sidewalks, and not only weren't the roads straight, they had clearly been made crooked on purpose, as though right angles brought out the same kind of reaction in the town's designers as too many fermented berries had in Applecore. The houses were small, or seemed to be — most were hidden in copses of leafy trees — but Theo had learned from Tansy's manor that you couldn't trust first impressions. The dwellings he could see were painted a riot of different colors and patterns, and came in a much wider variety of basic forms than Theo was used to — not just boxes, but cylinders, spheres, and more complicated shapes he couldn't define — and even, in the case of one upside-down pyramid balanced on its point, seemed actually to defy gravity.

"This is Penumbra Fields," said Heath. "It sort of grew up around the railway station. Commuter town, I think they call it. Lots of people with a house here work in the City, even though it's a long trip. Only come back on weekends, most of them."

The idea of fairies living in commuter towns didn't sit right, but Theo couldn't think of any specific reason why it shouldn't be so. It was definitely a suburb: they passed a park where a group of fairy children were chasing a small golden object that didn't look like either a ball or an animal, but was inarguably hopping; near them, other kids were flying colorful kites that didn't seem to have strings. He watched a line of smaller kids in many different sizes and shapes, winged and wingless, singing as they were led along the road by a floating, shimmering rainbow bubble the size of a cantaloupe; he guessed they were being escorted to or from school. He wanted very much to hear their song, but before he could figure out how to get his window down the car had passed the small parade.

More confusing was that he could see shiny automobiles in many of the houses' driveways, smaller and less ornate than the car in which he rode, but otherwise not much different: it was obvious that "coaches" weren't just for the rich. In fact, it seemed that the mechanized, early-Victorian nature of fairy civilization his great-uncle had written about as though it were the product of his own fancy, was not only true, that fairy civilization had advanced a great deal since Eamonn Dowd had filled his notebook.

But it's less than thirty years since he wrote that, Theo thought, and they were still deep in the gaslight era then. He stared at a very modern stoplight, similar to what you might find at an Earth intersection except for the colors of the lights, orange and lavender-blue instead of red and green — that and the fact that it hovered in midair, unsupported. Has everything here really changed so fast? Or has the time passed differently from our world? He remembered Tansy's talk of "slippage" and "distortion." What did that mean, exactly?

His thoughts were interrupted as Heath pulled the car through a wide turn, out of the tree-lined back avenue they had been following and into a wider road that dumped them into a busy town square. Theo stared at the row of tall, slender buildings surrounding the square like candles around the rim of a birthday cake. Some of them were over a hundred feet high, weird combinations of heavily decorated, almost Gothic architecture with unusual overall shapes and modern building materials. The large, low building just ahead that he guessed was the railroad station looked a bit like a pointless jumble of spiky objects, but it had a stately dome atop it that wouldn't have looked out of place on a small state capitol, although the hemisphere of this dome seemed more spiderweb than solid thing and was clearly open to the elements.

Must be miserable inside on a day like today, he thought, fighting a surge of homesickness so intense it verged on panic. Just my luck.

What he found most surprising was that they had passed out of a quiet country lane and in only moments were in a busy town center, even if the town itself wasn't very big. It was the first time he'd seen a lot of the so-called "coaches" in one place. Almost all of them were smaller than the town car in which he was riding, and came in a charming array of shapes and hues, from things that looked almost like Volkswagen Beetles to oddly asymmetrical creations whose front end and back end could only be ascertained for certain once Theo could see which way the drivers were facing. People were also traveling on things that looked like bicycles and motorcycles, and children rode on skimming boards and scooters, although calling them by those names substantially broadened the original concept — he saw at least one "scooter" that had weird coppery lizard legs instead of wheels. But if the road that went around the outside of the town square was full of odd conveyances, it was even more full of pedestrians, hundreds and hundreds of them.

"So many people here!" he said out loud.

"Ah, yes." Rufinus chuckled. "It must seem very large and loud to you, I suppose."

Theo scowled. "I didn't mean that. We have cities where I come from that are a thousand times bigger than this. I just… this is the first time I've seen more than a few of you people in one place." Although he had to admit to himself, "people" was another term that didn't quite fit. At a rough estimate, at least half of the folk in the square seemed much smaller than humans, although a few were much, much larger. Besides the knee-high gangs of young brownie toughs, the flocks of even more diminutive winged schoolchildren in uniforms, and the slender, wet, and sad-looking blue women pushing baby carriages or shopping carts, he also saw three or four hulking ogres and at least one weird scarecrow shape nearly ten feet tall that looked a bit like a man on stilts but clearly wasn't.

"Polevik," Applecore explained when she saw him staring at the tall fellow. "They can be shorter if they want to be. Probably got a job washing windows or something."

"Most of the other people in the square seem pretty small — um, no offense," he added quickly. "But a lot smaller than me, anyway. Why's that?"

"Ah, yes," said Rufinus. "I suppose that could be because they do not get the bracing country air we enjoy in the commune."

Applecore rolled her eyes. "Probably it's because lots of the big folks ride in coaches and the rest of us walk or fly, and that's why so many of the folk you see on the street are on the wee side."

"Ah." Rufinus nodded his head sagely. "I suppose you could be right about that, Kettledrum. Heath, be a good fellow and just turn here at the entrance." He scowled. "By the Trees, the holiday traffic is dreadful! I can understand the people needing to travel, but all these others hanging about — why are they not home spending Mabon with their families?"

"Because they can't get home," Applecore said a little sharply. "They can't afford it and their families live too far away."

"Hold on," Theo said to Rufinus. "You said somebody might be looking for us."

"Yes?"

"Well, shouldn't we find somewhere else to get out of a big car… big coach, I mean… like this? I mean, if there's anyone watching the station, wouldn't they be more likely to notice the coach than they would be to notice us by ourselves?"

Rufinus weft-Daisy nodded again. "Hmmm. That is an idea. Yes, you might very well be right." He turned to the doonie, who was already signaling for a left turn. "I've changed my mind. See if you can find us a place around the back to get out, won't you, Heath? Where we won't be so… so…"

"Conspicuous," Theo supplied, but he was thinking, Oh, God, I'm so doomed. From reading part of a Tom Clancy novel in a doctor's waiting room, I'm already better equipped for danger than this guy is.

It was quite a different scene around the back of the station; Theo had his first look at a less savory side of Fairie. Some of the shopfronts were boarded up, the walls were graffittoed — crosses and Stars of David were among the symbols used, he noticed in a bemused way, perhaps for shock value — and the streets were littered with what looked like drifting bits of paper. Fairy-folk in an interesting assortment of shapes stood in the doorways or thronged on corners. Theo had to keep reminding himself that none of them were wearing masks. He was in Fairyland and this was just how people looked, this bizarre aggregation of what he thought of as purely human characteristics along with horns and hooves and fur and bat ears. Some of the locals seemed to be having fun, laughing and talking or even playing musical instruments, which briefly made him want to get out of the car and spend some time listening, but many of the others looked lost — abandoned. A large portion of these street-fairies were of one particular type. They were all thin and almost all barefoot, with toes and fingers that stretched like tree roots, and the parts of their bodies he could see were covered in an uneven pelt of hair that might be greenish-gray or brown or several shades in between. They stood anywhere from half to three-quarters human size, and their skinny noses were as long as human fingers.

Theo pointed to a group of these creatures as they turned to watch the car roll past; he could not help noticing that they all had disturbingly bright yellow eyes. "What are those?"

"Goblins," said Rufinus. "There are so many here now! I can't imagine where they all came from."

"They came to work in the fields," Applecore said. "And they did, until the crops were in and the jobs ended."

"Then they should go back to… wherever it is they go," pronounced Rufinus. "Goblin Land. There is really no point to them standing around, cluttering the streets."

"I'm sure they feel the same way," Theo said, but quietly. At first it had just been his own situation that dragged on him, but now he had discovered that Faerie itself could be depressing, too.

As if worried that the troop of indigent goblins might follow them, Heath drove carefully over a sidewalk and down a narrow alley before stopping behind the station. Theo realized, with a jolt of sorrowful panic, that it was time to say good-bye to Applecore, but before he could think of anything to say — and while he was still worrying he might start blubbering like a child and completely humiliate himself — she buzzed up into the air.

"I think I'd like to go in and have a bit of a wash," she said. "It's a long ride back and I don't want to sit with meself that long just stinkin' like a day-old mackerel. Plus I need to go for a slash in the worst way."

"We have plenty of time," declared Rufinus airily, although Theo could tell he thought the sprite vulgar. "You can use the facilities, then we can all have a cup of tea together before you go. Heath will wait. And I will carry my own luggage!"

Heath, who was already unloading the bags, nodded his equine head. "If you're sure, your lordship. Yeah, I'll be here waiting, so take your time, missy." The doonie straightened up and turned to Theo. "Hey, I bet you were wondering about the window wipers, weren't you? My first-time passengers usually do."

"I think I guessed," Theo said. "It's for the rest of us, right? Because we'd get nervous if we couldn't see out the front, even though it doesn't make any difference to you."

If he'd had eyes, Heath might have had a twinkle in them. "Pretty good. That's part of it, yeah. But there's also the flying muryans."

"What are those?"

"They're little guys that look a bit like bugs. They hover over the roads and go splat on the windshield, which they deserve, because it's pretty stupid to hover over the Interdomain Highway even if it does cut through your ancestral land. It doesn't kill 'em most of the time, but it can't feel very good. Anyway, the wipers sweep them off before they have time to put a curse on you." He set Rufinus weft-Daisy's suitcase down on a relatively dry spot on the sidewalk, then raised a blunt-fingered hand and saluted before he swung himself back into the driver's seat. "Have a good trip, your lordship. You too, buddy," he told Theo. "Stay lucky."

"Now, let me think," said Rufinus as they ducked out of the rain and pushed their way in through the back entrance. "Where was that tea shop?" An old fairy with draggled wings and skin like an orange peel, bent over and coughing vigorously, shuffled a bit to the side to let them pass out of the vestibule and into the high-ceilinged station concourse.

Theo followed weft-Daisy, but slowly because he was staring around the station. There was something odd about the place, something that nagged at him. It wasn't the hundreds of fairy-folk of all shapes and sizes — he was growing used to that — or even the signs in a completely unfamiliar language and alphabet that he could nevertheless read, against all logic. (The one in front of him, written in what appeared to be some long-defunct Middle Eastern script, clearly had too many consonants, not to mention a few vowels that he'd never seen before, yet just as clearly said, "Citizens who appear to be Luggage must be prepared to Present their Tickets for Inspection at Any Time.") Neither was it the bronze statue they passed, although it was also fairly odd: what seemed to be a wingless sprite standing on the head of a sleeping, normal-sized figure, its arms raised in muted triumph. The plaque on the bottom said "We Will Never Forget Our Dead." It was only a moment later, when he saw the smaller words "Penumbra Veterans, Second Gigantine War" and puzzled out what "Gigantine" meant that he realized the two figures might just as well represent a normal-sized person standing on a dead giant. Someone had set a small pyramid of ripe apples in front of the monument, perhaps an offering of sorts.

Giants? he thought uneasily, and could not help looking up, as though even now some vast hand might be reaching down toward him. As he stared into the vaulted spaces of the ceiling, into the gray light streaming through the latticework of the dome and glinting across the silhouettes of tiny, flying humanoid creatures, all as strangely super-real in its own way as the scenery in Larkspur's forest, Theo suddenly realized what had been nagging at him. As he had seen from outside, there was no glass or anything else in the open fretwork of the dome, but although light was leaking in plentifully, the rain that had been splashing down all across the town was not.

All the rules are different here, he realized. Even the physics or whatever. Just… different.

Some things, though, seemed to be the same in both worlds. Women and their bladders, for instance.

"I'm burstin', Vilmos," Applecore confessed suddenly. "Oh, you walk slow, but. Can you just tell me where you're going and I'll meet you?"

"There's a cozy little tea shop in the corner near Track One, I believe," said Rufinus with the air of a veteran boulevardier. "Nothing much, but a bit better than average. We'll be there. What would you like?"

"The shortest possible distance to the jacks," she said; an instant later she was off like a wasp fired from a slingshot.

Theo, meanwhile, could not help his slow progress. For the first time he was getting a chance to see faces up close — fairy faces of all types. There were the little people, of course, brownies and gnomes (he guessed they were gnomes; they certainly had the boot-tickling beards for it) and many other types who did not even reach his waist, most of them with faces as wrinkly and knobby as dried-apple dolls. Even smaller were the sprites like Applecore, little more than swift shimmers in the air until they stopped to hover. There were plenty of goblins as well, some working menial jobs in the station, some waiting for trains, others apparently just hanging around, doing a bit of panhandling. The goblins seemed of all ages and many economic stations, but all of them seemed actively to avoid eye contact with Theo and Rufinus.

Are they supposed to do that or something? he wondered. Do they get in trouble for looking at the upper-class fairies? Or do they just hate our guts?

Our? He was amused despite himself. And what makes you think that if you lived here in Fairyland, you wouldn't be a goblin or something even farther down the totem pole? It's like reincarnation, those people who believe in previous lives always think they were dukes or queens or something, ignoring the fact that most people back then spent their whole lives up to their knees in shit before dying of toothless old age at thirty.

But it was the faces of the upper-class fairy men and fairy women that were most intriguing — the women in particular, of course. Not just because the "nobles" were by far the most human, or because by human standards they were all good-looking (although they certainly were) but because of how they were good-looking.

They weren't perfect. In fact, although by and large they had a greater regularity of feature than the average set of human train station visitors, they weren't more attractive in aggregate than your average Hollywood party full of wanna-be actors and actresses. But what kept them from being perfect — and thus perfectly dull — were features Theo couldn't quite define, features which pulled them away from the human norm and which were fascinating precisely because he didn't recognize where they came from.

When he had first met Count Tansy he had thought him something like a Celtic-Asian or Scandinavian-Asian mixture, but with skin tones lighter than either. Now, seeing all this fairy nobility at once, he began to see a fuller example of the types that he had only been able to classify with human approximates before. The "Asian" eyes were by and large set wider in the face than in most humans. What he had thought an extreme Northern European lightness of skin in Tansy actually seemed to be near the middle of the fairy scale, and there were subtle colors in that skin type, green and purple overtones so faint as to be almost invisible, that made even the most linen-pale of Irish maidens look like a ruddy Sicilian dock roustabout by comparison.

That was what made them so interesting, and the women so alluring: these average fairies were not much more beautiful than humans, but they were compounded of so many different — and to Theo unfamiliar — types that each face seemed almost a new world in itself.

Not that it was always easy to get a good look at the faces, especially those of the women. At least one aspect of the fashions which Eamonn Dowd had described appeared to have survived into this more modern era — all-enveloping clothing for women: gloves and long soft skirts and calf-length coats of crisp, pale fabrics. Dozens of upper-class fairy women waited on benches or took tea with friends in the small station restaurants, but there was scarcely an ankle to be seen among them. Big hats and head scarves seemed to be in fashion, too. The whole scene was bizarrely Edwardian: if it hadn't been for things like swooping sprites and little men with heads like pug dogs working the shoeshine booths, Theo could have been watching a costume drama on public television. He wondered for a moment if the rainy weather was making them cover up, but if so, the working fairies, big and small, seemed to pay it little mind, dressing for comfort and blithely displaying bare arms, bare legs, bare wings…

"Hey, why don't any of you have wings?" Theo asked suddenly.

Rufinus turned in obvious irritation. "What are you talking about?"

"Wings. You don't have 'em. Your… cousin, whatever, Tansy — he didn't have 'em either. I thought maybe it was only the little ones that grew them, but there goes somebody your size," he pointed to a young fairy woman in a funny white hat that looked like a flattened seagull, "and she's got 'em."

"She's a nurse," said Rufinus, as if this explained something.

"But why don't you and your cousin have wings?"

Rufinus shook his head slowly. "The better people… don't. Now, here is the tea shop. I hope they haven't changed proprietors — I've not been here in months."

Theo shrugged and followed him in.

As Rufinus ordered three teas, two large and one extra-small, from a red-faced woman with stubby wings who had to stand on a stool to see over the countertop, Theo found himself staring at the various delicacies behind the glass. The pastries were lovely, each one a piece of staggeringly careful craftsmanship. He was just about to ask Rufinus to order one for him when he noticed that the dainty little torte whose shimmering colors had caught his eye appeared to be made from real butterflies. Real, living butterflies, since the wings were still gently moving. Another had a pile of what seemed to be sugar-dusted fish eyes mounded on its center.

His appetite in retreat, he followed Rufinus and the tray toward a table in front of the tea shop which afforded them a grand view of the concourse — and the concourse a grand view of them. "Ummm, I hate to be a nag," Theo said, "but shouldn't we sit farther back? Just to keep a low profile?"

This time Rufinus could not hide his annoyance at Theo's suggestion, but he shrugged with what was probably a fairy lord's equivalent of good grace and let Theo lead him back to a more shadowy spot along the shop's inside back wall. As Rufinus poured the tea, Theo watched Applecore appear in the shop's open frontage, a small shadow zigzagging in place as she hunted for them. "Over here!" he called.

She saw them and buzzed across the room so quickly that one of the patrons was just beginning to swat absently at a spot above his head as Applecore landed on the table next to Theo's saucer.

"Nice of you to join us," said Rufinus.

"Yeah, cheers." She turned to Theo. "Don't turn around too suddenlike, but there's some fellas I don't much like the look of across the station. In front of that Wingworks shop. They're watching you."

He looked. "I don't see anybody there."

She rose up off the table for a quick survey. "They've gone, now." She turned to Rufinus. "Three fellas, your size but a bit strange. No, a lot strange. Cool and collected, though — not street hooligans. Wearing dark coats."

Now Rufinus was squinting too, but with the absent air of someone examining a cloud that a child has claimed looks like a duckie or a horsie. "Maybe you were mistaken, Kettledrum. Of course, there are lots of people in long coats. On account of the rain, you know."

"It's Applecore," she said, but without the heat Theo felt sure he'd have received in Rufinus' place.

It's a class thing, he realized. She treats me like an equal and expects the same back. But she doesn't think she's going to get it from him — and she won't either, from what I've seen.

"Still, it's good of you to be concerned," allowed weft-Daisy. "And I am not altogether unprepared. Fear not, Master Vilmos, should something happen, I will protect you. Cousin Quillius gave me some quite fine little counter-charms against attack, for one thing. And I also have more than a bit of experience with other forms of defense. Did you know I captained the fencing team at Evermore my last year up at school?"

"His intramural team," Applecore whispered loudly. "From his residence hall."

"But you don't have a sword," Theo pointed out.

Rufinus smiled so happily that for a moment Theo almost liked him. "Ah — so you believe, my mortal friend. But look here." And he lifted his valise and tugged something out of the bottom. As it slid out, Theo saw that it was either a short sword or an extremely long knife — the blade seemed a good half a foot longer than the width of the valise.

God help us, he's one of those guys who thinks he'd be good in a fight. Now Theo was beginning to feel really, really nervous. He had been in just enough serious combat himself, mostly because of playing music in nasty little dives, to know that not only wasn't he any good in fights, but that being good just made it more likely someone would bust a pool cue across the back of your head when you weren't looking.

"So let's finish our refreshments, shall we?" said Rufinus. "We have the best part of an hour until the train leaves."

Theo forced himself to sit still and drink his tea. There was nothing he could do to get home any faster or any more safely. It was like being in trouble up on top of a Himalayan mountain: you could moan and scream about it all you wanted, but ultimately you still had to find your way down.

"Goodness, two cups of Gossamer Hills has gone right through me," weft-Daisy declared, pushing back his chair. "But there should be plenty of time for me to take a little walk and find the first-class lounge — so much nicer than using the facilities on the train."

Theo had still not entirely got used to the idea of fairies urinating, but it was growing clear to him that within their own world, or universe, or dimension — whatever the hell this place was — they were just as physical as humans on Earth. "So should I just wait for you here?"

"No, I think you should go to the train, Theo," Applecore said firmly before Rufinus could speak. "Don't want to cut it too close. I'll help him find the track," she told the fairy lord. "Then you can just meet him there."

"Ah, very kind of you. Well, if you'll excuse me." He started away across the restaurant, then came back for his valise. "Wouldn't do to leave this behind, would it?"

Tansy's cousin had only just disappeared from sight when something yanked hard on Theo's earlobe.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing? That hurt!"

"Come on. You're not going to sit here, and you're not going to sit on the platform, either."

"What are you talking about?"

"I saw those three fellas who were watching you and they weren't nice. Do you trust me?"

"More than anyone else I've met here, yeah."

She wrinkled her tiny nose for a moment, weighing the remark. "Well, that's as much as I can expect, I's'pose. Anyway, I think Tansy's lad is a bit of a dobber, and I think you need to be watching out for yourself."

"That makes sense to me."

"Good. Then we're going out of here through the back door and see if we can't find a bit less obvious way to get you on the train. That's one of the reasons I didn't try to hurry you lot out of here. Just as well to wait 'til just before the train goes out to board. Follow me." She rose into the air and led him down the aisle toward the employees-only section of the tea shop.

"What are we doing?"

"Nipping out the back, like I said. It'll be easier to get across the station without attracting attention if we just go round that way, where they dump the rubbish and all."

She led him through the kitchen, where two fat little manlike creatures, both smoking clay pipes — he guessed they were what Applecore called "bogles" — stood on stools that raised them to the necessary height to do their work. One of them was tending the fry basket, the other lifting and inspecting pastries in the open oven with a long-handled paddle.

"Whither goest, tinyfry?" the bogle by the oven asked Applecore lazily. He sounded like a Shakespearean comic rustic, with a broad accent that sounded vaguely northern England to Theo, who didn't know much about English regional accents beyond the Beatles. He still couldn't figure out why fairies should sound like British and Irish folk, anyway.

"Out the back, you great ball of guts," Applecore said. "It's lucky you're good-looking, because you'll never be a cook — your millefois tastes like shoe leather."

As the fry cook laughed, the oven-bogle grinned. "And it's lucky for you that you're such a sweet-talker," he said, "because you're going to need to be able to make new chums — your boyfriend just stepped into the walk-in refrigerator."

Theo heard this last just as the door swung shut behind him with a resounding ka-chunk. He was suddenly very, very cold.

But I didn't touch the damn thing, he told himself. It just closed, like… magic.

Shit.

He had to stand, shivering, as Applecore argued with the cooks about opening the door. He heard her call the bogles lots of names, which made him feel a little better, but unlikely as it seemed, there were moments when she seemed to be laughing as she did it.

His teeth were chattering pretty hard when the door finally popped open again.

"What use dating a petalhead such as yon when he can't even muster a cantrip for latchlifting?" the fry cook chuckled as he beckoned Theo out. "Come out, our frosty master. Else we might mistake you for something edible and put you in a stew, then go up before the Assizes for floricide."

"Sass," said Applecore, but Theo didn't think she looked very indignant on his behalf.

"If thou shouldst grow bored and pissed off with petalheads, small nifty, and return to dating your own social equals," grinned the fat oven-bogle as he waved good-bye, "you'll know where I might be found."

"Yeah and some verily," said the other. "Up to his overworked mouth in flour, as always. Door to the service corridor's that way."

"Nice enough fellas," said Applecore as they made their way down the narrow hallway that ran behind the row of shops.

Theo had a feeling that if Rufinus had made that comment, he would have automatically added, "for bogles."

"They liked you," he told Applecore.

"Get away with you."

"Oh, they didn't? So why are you blushing?"

"Am not. Shut your gob."

As they reached the last door in the corridor, Applecore flew up close to his face. "Now, when we step out, don't look around — that's the kind of thing people notice. Remember, you've just been doing something you're supposed to do and now you're on your way to do something else you're supposed to do. Don't look around. That's what guilty people do."

"Wow. You're pretty impressive. Like a miniature John LeCarré out of a box of Cracker Jacks."

"I don't even know what that means, but I'm sure it won't keep me from kicking you in your earhole. Now shut up and push the door open."

He wondered briefly how people Applecore's size opened doors like this when there weren't people Theo's size around, then they were out and walking past the ladies' room for another station restaurant. At least, he assumed it was the ladies' room, since one of the several silhouettes on it looked humanoid and female, although most of the other silhouettes looked more like vacuum cleaner attachments. Theo decided it didn't bear too much thinking about.

The business was a book and magazine store full of browsing travelers. The place was festooned with harvest-holiday decorations, sprays of leaves and piles of produce on almost every surface and stylized moons hanging from the rafters. At least he assumed they were decorations — it was hard to tell, here in Faerie, what might be just the normal weirdness. As he followed Applecore down the rows of glossy magazines, he experienced the strange cognitive dissonance again: he could understand everything written on them without understanding a word of the language or script. "Making Oak Blight Work for You!" trumpeted something on the cover of one that his brain translated as Roots — the Dryad Magazine. There were dozens of others, all equally unlikely — it was like walking through the set of some expensive Hollywood comedy: Wingspan — for Working Mothers with articles like "Forget Your Frost-Charms — A Fresh Mabon Feast in Minutes!" and newspapers called The Trooping News and The Arden Intelligencer with headlines proclaiming "Coextensives Fighing to Hold Coalition Power" and "Holly's Generator Outages Blamed on Worker Morale."

The browsers were just as unlikely a collection as the periodicals, everything from be-hatted and veiled fairy women who looked like they'd been flown in from a remake of A Passage to India to a group of talking hedgehogs all wearing what appeared to be matching rugby shirts and carrying pennants and coolers, shoving and arguing good-naturedly while one of their number bought a bag of salted grubs.

"You're looking around too much," Applecore hissed in his ear. "Walk faster. You're on your way somewhere."

He had hesitated in front of a magazine rack, staring at something called Aodh's Harp — he figured that of the two kinds of periodicals he generally liked, in a land of women who always wore head-to-toe clothing he was probably going to have better luck with music magazines — but he realized she was right. Thinking about how little he knew here made him feel hopeless and twisted that skewer of homesickness in his guts again. It was one thing to make him up to look a bit more like a fairy, another thing entirely to expect him to pull it off. It was like dumping an ice cream vendor into a particle physics conference and telling him to fake it. If all he had to do was sit and look like he knew what was happening — well, maybe. But ask him to get up and discuss quarks? Disaster.

"Track Twelve," Applecore said as she led him out of the magazine store and onto the concourse. They were half a dozen storefronts down from the tea shop, which reduced the chance of someone spotting them coming out. Applecore quickly found a group of people moving generally toward the tracks and Theo wrapped the crowd around him like a cloak.

I guess I should be grateful everyone else here isn't Applecore's size. Then I'd really have trouble blending in. He saw no sign of the sprite's trio of rough-lookin' fellas, and for a moment wondered if Rufinus might not be the more sensible after all. Why would anyone send some kind of professional fairy detectives after a know-nothing mortal? Maybe the whole thing with that poor Hollyhock guy's heart had been some kind of mistake, nothing to do with Theo at all. He basked for a moment in the warmth of the idea, although he didn't really believe it. After all, somebody had sent that dead thing after him.

Applecore hissed at him. "Over here! I've just seen 'em!"

His heart now bumping along quite quickly, he let his winged companion lead him to a sheltered space just across from Track Eleven, between a pillar and a little windowed kiosk with the name Ariel's, a spot where he would be out of obvious sight while she went to investigate. Theo tried to look as though he were reading the advertising in the windows carefully. The kiosk sold what he at first thought were waffles, but after a while spent watching the hairnetted brownies handing out the little bundles wrapped in waxed paper, Theo decided their product was some kind of pre-processed frozen honeycomb dessert.

Something touched his ear. He jumped.

"Don't do that!" Applecore said in a strained whisper. "Just stand still! Look through the window and out the door on the far side. See?"

He did. Twenty steps on the other side of the kiosk, three dark, lanky figures stood by a bench watching people go by without being obvious about it. Even though their faces were mostly shaded by their hats, he could see the suggestion of something pale and shiny-wet between brim and collar, a sandcrab gleam.

"Oh, my God."

"Just stay here. The train won't board for another few minutes, but we may be all right. They're looking down the other way so they don't know we're already past 'em." She settled on his shoulder. Her presence was oddly but unquestionably comforting. "Hollow-men."

"Hollow-men? What does that mean?"

"They're a sort of troll. Underground folk. Man-stealers, they used to be, when their caves still opened in your world. They're good at what they do and they keep their mouths shut. Someone's paying a pretty penny for you, boyo."

"Jesus! What does everyone want with me? I'm just a guy!"

"Ssshhh." Her tone was more urgent now. "There's Tansy's cousin. Bloody eejit certainly took his time."

Theo started to say something, but the hollow-men abruptly slid away from the bench and moved toward Rufinus, smooth as wheeling sharks. They vanished for a moment into the crowd at the edge of the railheads, then closed in behind him and on either side as the young fairy reached Track Ten. He looked at one of them without seeming to notice, but then his head swung to the other side and he stopped. The hollow-men quickly surrounded him at arm's length. For a moment no one seemed to do much of anything: the foursome could have been chance acquaintances chatting about the dodginess of railway schedules. The creatures' chins were close to their chests and their faces were mostly hidden by collars and hats, but Theo felt sure they were talking to weft-Daisy, because the alarmed and cautious look on his face was becoming something else, an expression almost of contempt.

"Call for help, you daft fool!" Applecore said urgently but quietly. For a confusing second, Theo thought she was speaking to him.

Instead, Rufinus weft-Daisy turned abruptly and began to walk along the concourse. The trio of trolls walked with him, surrounding him. One leaned close and whispered in Rufinus' ear; the fairy stopped and lifted his valise in both hands.

He's pulling that blade, Theo realized, but in the instant it took for the thought to form the black figures had already folded around weft-Daisy like a gloved fist. Rufinus slumped a little, as though he had suddenly grown dizzy. The hollow-men helped him walk a few steps toward the bench where they had originally been waiting and let him sit down there. They leaned together briefly, then turned and glided toward the tea shop in loose formation.

"What… what happened?"

"Stay here, Theo. Don't make a sound!" Applecore dove from his shoulder to floor level and shot away. He had one brief glimpse of her slaloming around the legs of other station patrons, then he thought he could see her hovering beside weft-Daisy, who still sat on the bench with his mouth open as though he were the recipient of stunning news.

Which, in a way, he had been.

Moments later Applecore dropped back onto Theo's shoulder from nowhere, making him jump again so that he bumped his nose against the Ariel's kiosk window. A pair of young goblins sharing a honeycomb looked up at him in amusement.

"He's dead," she whispered.

"What?"

"When you're not alive anymore! Dead!"

"I know what it means!" Panic rose higher now, threatening to choke him. What kind of world was this? "How can he be dead? He had charms or something! What happened?"

"Cathedral knife, I think — no charm can stop one of those. They opened up his belly — he's got a lapful of his own guts. Terrible." Her crisp words hid her own shock and fear, but not completely. "And they took his case, too. He's just sitting there. Someone will notice any moment."

"I should damn well hope so!"

"Well, you'd better hope it doesn't happen before you get on that train or the constables will hold everyone here and start checking identification." Her voice was tight with desperation. "You'll wind up in the Penumbra Fieldshire jail and sometime before Tansy's solicitor gets here you'll decide to hang yourself in your cell."

"I'll what… ? But I wouldn't…" He suddenly realized what she was saying. His heart was thumping away like a methedrined woodpecker. "How could that happen?"

"Whoever hired these fellas isn't joking around, Theo. There aren't but a dozen or so Cathedral knives in the whole of the land — they're made of spell-hallowed glass from the ruins on the Old Mound itself. They don't get handed out to every Tom, Dick, and Hobthrush, y'know — those fellas are working for someone important."

"What do I do now? Oh, shit, poor Rufinus — he was an idiot, but I can't believe he's dead!" Theo wiped sweat off his face. The only idea he could come up with was to run screaming across the station, but it didn't seem like a good one. "How will I get to the city without him? I don't even know what it's called!"

To his amazement, Applecore burst into shrill, near-hysterical laughter. "By the Trees, fella, you really do take it all. What's it called? The City, man, the City! There's only one! It's like saying you don't know which 'up' someone's talking about." The sprite fell silent. She seemed to be oscillating between terror and a kind of fast-thinking omnicompetence. After a long moment of close-eyed concentration, she said, "I suppose I'm going with you, then, amn't I?"

"Oh, Jesus, can you really? Will you?"

"Stop saying that blasted name — you made that lady over there shiver and she didn't even hear you. No more talking." She shot off for a moment, then returned. "Those three fellas are still poking around down by the tea shop. Step out from behind here and just start walking toward Track Twelve. See if you can find some other people going that direction. Whatever you do, don't look around!"

Rufinus' body had begun to sag and now stared down at the floor with glassy eyes, as though it had lost something and was looking for it there. A little fairy woman with a rolling basket full of parcels had seated herself at the other end of the bench from the corpse. At the moment she was oblivious to her companion's condition, but how long could that last?

"Let's go, then," Theo said. "I might as well have my heart attack walking as standing."

The sea of unfamiliar fairy faces which at first had seemed fascinating, and for the last half hour had mostly gone unnoticed, now swirled past him like a nightmare. At any moment he expected someone to point at him and shout, "Impostor!"

Most difficult of all was the feeling — no, the certainty — that something with a clammy white face was moving up behind him, reaching out a hand for the back of his neck…

"Don't you dare turn around," said Applecore.

As he fell in with a group of people his own size moving down the platform of Track Twelve, heading for the first-class section, something came to him like a splash of cold water.

"Oh, my God, Tansy's cousin must have the tickets!"

"No, he doesn't. I took 'em off him an hour ago and stuck 'em in your coat because I didn't trust the poor daft lad not to lose 'em."

"And I didn't notice?"

She snorted. "I could have shoved the Parliament building into your pocket and you wouldn't have noticed. You were lookin' at girls. Now turn here — get on!"

He stepped up into the third-class compartment. Inside it was a zoo, almost literally, as creatures of all shapes and sizes struggled for a place to sit down. Applecore whispered that it would be just as well not to get wedged in, so they moved to the far end of the car and stood near the door, among a group of other human-sized but apparently lower-class fairies who eyed Theo's clothes and quickly turned away. He wondered what that meant.

"Why won't this stupid train leave?" he whispered to Applecore. He could feel the trio of hollow-men out there as though they were fins circling his leaking boat. He wanted to run down to the engine and take the driver by the neck and bang his head until he throttled up and pulled out of the station.

As if the distant engineer could feel this potential threat to his well-being, the steam whistle let out a great pteranodon shriek.

"Thank God," Theo gasped. An instant later two corpse-faced, black-clad shapes hustled past the windows of their railway carriage. For a moment he thought the hollow-men would come into his car and his stuttering heart would stop completely, but instead they shoved onward through the crowd on the platform, heading toward the first-class cars. A few moments later the train began to ease its way out of the station.

"Did they get on?" Theo asked Applecore. "Or did we leave without them?"

She shrugged, but she did not look either happy or confident.

It rode the planar winds like an invisible kite, a shapeless presence stretched wide, wide, every bit of it alive and alert to the thing it sought. It was close now — even in the midst of all the similar creatures surrounding its quarry, the irrha sensed its target as easily as an owl might spot a single small motion of warm life in the midst of a forest of undergrowth.

Following that target had not been easy this time: the journey between the two planes was more difficult than the irrha had, in its unthinking way, anticipated — rougher and more strenuous. Things had changed during the slow millennia it had sleepwalked in the dark between-places. If a tireless thing could be weary, it was. If a thing without emotions could be frustrated, it was that, too. To be so close to its goal — to touch the quarry, nearly — but not to close and seize and complete its burning directive, had filled the irrha with a sensation it had not experienced in so long that it did not remember what it was. But one thing the hunter did know: it did not like the sensation at all.

Closer, closer… there. It had located its target precisely. All that remained was to cross that last fragile membrane and become embodied, to take form by joining with something that could move through this plane before the quarry slipped away again. It had chosen badly in the last place, first wearying itself dispelling the body's living inhabitant, then finding that the fleshy envelope was so damaged that it had been forced to spend valuable time supplementing the damaged parts with bits of other bleating, warm meat-things. The quarry was so close here, actually within reach — the hunter could not afford to be slowed again by such resistance or such incompleteness.

It swooped, spun, fell closer. So much life here, so confusing for senses honed in the chasms of the deepest, most lightless and warmthless dimensional oceans! But the irrha was determination itself. It found what it was looking for and moved to take possession, bursting out into a jittering, exploding worldsphere of light and color and sound.

Cornelia Yarrow surveyed her purchases — a flying toy powered by a simple but long-lasting charm, a goblin doll in traditional dress of feathers, beads, and dragonwing cloak, not to mention a selection of sports pennants with the insignia of leading houses and butterfly-patterned scarves that friends had assured her were being worn by all the fashionable ladies and gentlemen in the city, as well as dozens of other trinkets. She thought she had spent a little more than she should have on a few of them, but the main thing was that she still had half an hour until her train back home to Willow and she had finished buying gifts for everyone on her list, her niece and all the many grand-nieces and grandnephews. Out in their little forest village, her relatives considered Penumbra Fields to be almost as big as the City itself: they would have been terribly disappointed if Aunt Cornelia had not brought back gifts from her trip to the Honeysuckle Academy for Girls' tricentennial reunion.

Thinking of her grandnieces, one of whom was going up to Honeysuckle next year, she suddenly felt old. Could it really be three hundred years since she had walked those echoing halls as a student? Sometimes it seemed only a few seasons in the past.

As she put her parcels back in her wheeled basket she could not help noticing that the unpleasant odor around the bench had grown worse. She looked at the sleeping man down at the far end. He was well-dressed, but you never knew what these upper-class folk might get up to, especially the young ones. Out on some kind of sustained rag, no doubt. Still, he didn't smell drunk, he smelled… unclean.

The stranger's head turned toward her and the eyes popped open. Cornelia Yarrow could not suppress a gasp of surprise. There was something wrong with the Flower lord's eyes — they seemed blank and dull, almost blind.

The mouth worked. When he finally spoke, the young noble sounded as if he had never used any language before, let alone the proper diction his social station demanded.

"Where… ?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Where… is… ?" The blank-eyed man shook his head as if the effort to speak was too much, then stood up. A messy something slid off his lap and onto the station's tiled floor with a wet slurp.

That's extremely inconsiderate, Miss Yarrow thought, he's just dropped his lunch on the ground, what kind of manners do they teach these young people today… ? But as she looked at the red, slippery mass of tubing lying beside the bench and the bits that still hung out of the young man's tattered shirt, Cornelia Yarrow came very close to screaming. Instead, she fainted dead away onto the bench.

The irrha, apparently satisfied with Rufinus weft-Daisy's body, which although most decidedly dead was still flexible and not too badly disabled, turned away from the bench and began walking slowly across Penumbra Station, stuffing its dangling innards back into its clothing.

15 THE PLAINS OF GREAT ROWAN

The shape of Faerie itself is even stranger than the nautilus plan of the city I call New Erewhon — for it is no shape at all. To accurately reflect the experience of traveling there, a map of that land would have to revolve like a child's top or go through some other metamorphosis I cannot quite conceive, for Faerie simply will not lie flat and behave itself…

"Reading something?"

Depressed by what was, for Fairyland, a rather brooding landscape smearing past the rainy windows, mostly hilly meadows empty of trees, and by the crush of weird creatures and their strange smells in the third-class compartment, Theo had been trying to reexamine a little of his great-uncle's book. He looked up to see the owner of the voice, something vaguely sheeplike, leaning in from the seat beside him, its belligerent little red eyes squinting beneath knotted gray fleece.

"Uh… yes. I'm reading something."

"Can't read, me. Never learned." It showed long, flat yellow teeth in what might have been a smile, but might just as easily have been a smirk of menace.

"I'm sorry. To hear that."

"Oh, I admire you clever folk who can." It didn't sound very admiring. It leaned a little closer, giving him a whiff of breath like souring milk. "You must think them like me are stupid."

"No, I don't…"

"Just a stupid padfoot, you'll be thinking. And who could blame you? You with your education and advantages and all."

Theo was beginning to wish quite desperately that Applecore would come back from her inspection of the rest of the train. He had hoped that just keeping his mouth shut and avoiding eye contact would keep him out of trouble.

"Hey, yarnback," said a more human-looking fairy, one of the few Theo had seen that actually looked middle-aged. This one was dressed in worn but clean clothing and had a few lines on his face and the closest thing to a tan Theo had yet glimpsed. But he was also wiry and strong, and he was not looking at the padfoot kindly. "Why are you pestering the lad?"

"Is it your affair, old-timer?" the sheeplike thing asked. "Or are you just certain that anyone with manshape is in the right?"

"Manshape's got nothing to do with it," said another creature that certainly did not fall into that category, with an armadillo-like hide and a tiny, plated head that barely poked out of the top of the bony armor. "You're just looking for trouble. Before we even got into Penumbra you were bumping and swearing at some poor boggart because you said he spilled your lunch."

"He did! Clumsy little needlenose knocked over a whole box of hayslaw!"

While the argument continued, Theo slowly sank back into the corner. He lifted his book up to block out these impossible train companions and struggled to focus on his great-uncle's handwriting.

Faerie is divided into regions called "fields," and these regions are not always the same. That is, they remain the same within themselves, but they are not always in the same relationship to each other — at least that is the closest I can come to explaining it, or even grasping it myself. It sometimes seems as though the lands of Faerie are in rings which move, so that one week two lands seem to be beside each other, then the next week it is not so. But it is even more complicated than that, because there are no clear rules to this either in amount of movement or regularity. One day you cannot get to the field of Gateway Oak from Ivy Round or from Great Rowan to Hawthorn Scathe. Then the next day the paths from Oak to Ivy are again clear, but Rowan and Hawthorn may remain divided.

I traveled little outside the City so I did not see many of these effects myself, although I did once, as I will describe. But I often heard it spoken of in precisely the same way that people in my world might talk of the weather without bothering to explain why you should take an umbrella on a rainy day — assuming that any sane adult listener would know. Thus, acquaintances of mine would say, "Alder is far this year, but so beautiful at this season. I think we should gather a traveling party and go — we could be there in a few days." At some other point I might hear that same person say, "I was in Alder Head yesterday evening…"

Something tickled Theo's neck and he stiffened, imagining it was the woolly muzzle of the sheep-man again.

"There's no sign of the hollow-fella," Applecore said into his ear.

Theo tried to keep his voice low. "He's not on the train?" To Theo's immense relief, as the train had pulled out of Penumbra Station they had seen two of the slug-faced hollow-men standing in a crowd on the station, but since one was still unaccounted for, Applecore had been searching the other compartments.

"There's no sign of him, which isn't quite the same thing. The train's pretty full and he could be in the jacks or somethin'. I hope you didn't expect me to force my way into every lavatory on the bleeding train."

"No. So what do we do now?"

"Talk a little quieter, for one thing. I'm standing right next to your jawbone, remember? I can hear you even if you barely whisper, but most other folk can't. What do we do now? Keep on to the City, I guess. I'll get you to these people who want to see you, then I'll head back to my old ones and my brothers and sisters."

"Should you… call someone in your family? Let them know where you are?"

"Nah, I'm a big girl. But that reminds me — we have to tell Tansy what happened."

"How?"

"He gave you that speaking-shell."

"Oh, yeah, we'd call it a phone."

"Whatever. He needs to know. At the very least, the Daisy-clan folk should know that someone's killed one of their family."

"Call from here?" Theo looked around. The padfoot had lapsed back into sullen silence, and was winding a lock of fleece around its dirty gray hoof-hand while glaring at the fairy who had intervened. There were perhaps two hundred other living creatures in the compartment and very few of them looked remotely human. Some of them had ears like bats, and for all he knew were listening to his and Applecore's every word.

"You're right, for once. When's the next stop?" She looked up. "It's a good long way to Starlightshire still, so you probably won't lose your seat if you get up and go to the jacks."

"That's the toilet, right? Let's go."

The restroom was at one end of the car. Theo lost his balance several times, once having to steady himself on what he thought was the back of a seat and found out only when its owner grunted in irritation was actually the raised neckplate of something strange and lizardlike.

"Maybe we should have snuck into Second Class instead of settling for Third," Applecore whispered as Theo backed away with fulsome apologies. "Seems they'll let anyone on a train these days."

He opened the restroom door, which other than a very low, very wide toilet and a sink with a tiny ladder running up the wall beside it, did not contain anything too frightening in the way of facilities. "Do you want to come in?"

"I should keep an eye open for trouble."

"Looks like there's a latch on the door. Come in. What if Tansy asks me something I can't answer?"

She frowned. "I've never gone into a public toilet with a fella. Not since my da took me when I was a little one."

"We seem to be experiencing a lot of firsts this week," Theo said. "Come on."

With the door closed, it would have been a tightly uncomfortable fit with any second person except Applecore. She dragged a paper towel out of the dispenser and spread it on the edge of the tiny sink like a picnic blanket, then sat down. "At least the place isn't too horrid," she said. "I hate the mess some people leave in places like this."

"I know what you mean," said Theo.

"No, you don't," she said. "Not until you're my size and the mess is twenty times bigger."

"You win." He stared at himself in the mirror. "I'm going to scrub off this make-up Dolly put on me. It's starting to rub off on my clothes, and anyway, there are lots of people on the train who are as tan as I am."

"Yeah, but they're workin' folk."

"I don't care. There are so many different kinds of people on this train, no one'll notice. I just want to get it off." He washed his face with warm water, then used a dispenser-towel — it felt more like silk than paper — to scrub away the small creamy traces left around his ears and jaw. Feeling a bit more comfortable, he lifted the case out of his pocket and opened it. "Now we get down to business." He looked at the filigree bird-shape nestled on the velvet. "Do I lift it out?"

"Just talk. Call Tansy."

"Call him how?"

"By name. His first name's Quillius."

Theo leaned in until his breath misted on the golden object as he said Tansy's name. Nothing happened. He tried again; after a moment the statuette began to gleam as though it had been lifted and turned toward the sunlight.

"What is it?" Although the ornament was in the case, the voice was in Theo's ear and it was unmistakably Tansy's. "I've just sat down to eat."

"Things have gone very wrong," Theo said.

"Who is this?"

"Jesus!" Applecore glared at him. Theo tried to speak more calmly. "Can't you even guess? How many other people have you tossed to the wolves lately?"

"Vilmos?" Suddenly the fairy lord's voice was sharp in a very different way. "What do you mean?"

"Your cousin, nephew — whatever he was — he's…" He paused. He might not like Tansy, but that didn't mean he should deliver bad news this way. "I'm afraid something bad has happened. Rufinus has been attacked and killed."

"What? Where are you? What's going on?"

Theo tried to explain as succinctly as he could. Tansy seemed very surprised, but if he was brokenhearted it did not show — he might be hearing from the gardener about what looked to be an expensive case of lawn-blight.

Maybe I'm not being fair, he thought. They're not like me.

"Is the sprite there?"

"She is, yeah."

"I wish to speak to her, too. Applecore?" There was a sudden pop in Theo's head. When the little fairy answered, her voice was suddenly in his ear as well, as though she were perched on his shoulder instead of sitting fastidiously on a disposable towel.

"I'm here, Count Tansy."

"Thank you for staying to help our guest. What Master Vilmos has said…" He hesitated — he clearly wanted to ask, "Is it all true?" but felt that would be an insult to Theo. "… Is there anything you want to add?"

Maybe he's a little bit human after all, Theo decided.

"Not much, sir. We're in a great steaming pile of trouble, though, that's sure."

"When you get to the city, you must go straight to Hollyhock House. No, wait. Someone also killed the young Hollyhock lad who was sent here. That could mean a number of things, not least that there are spies in their household — or in mine, which seems more likely considering that there were people lying in wait for you and poor Rufinus as well." Tansy was silent for a long moment; when he finally spoke, he seemed strangely hesitant. "The most trustworthy and sensible Coextensive outside of our Daisy clan is Lord Foxglove. He's a clever man and as well-acquainted with the city's eddies and undertows as a nymph is with her river."

Reminded, Theo looked down at the knot of rivergrass on his wrist. What the hell was a nymph-binding, anyway? He would have to ask Applecore to explain properly.

"Lord Foxglove is certainly clever, sir — too clever, some say," the sprite was telling Tansy.

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"It's just that some people say he's friends with Lord Thornapple."

"As are many others, from many houses."

"You would know better than me, sir. It's just that Thornapple is… he's…"

"An Excisor — a Chokeweed, as you'd put it? Yes, Thornapple is of that party, although he is also one of the more intelligent and flexible of their number. In fact, most of his positions are not that far different from those of us in the Daisy clan — except for his dislike of mortals, of course, which is excessive. But whatever Thornapple may be, Lord Viorel Foxglove is not a Chokeweed, but one of the more sensible moderates, a member of my own faction in Parliament. And there is nothing wrong with having friends who differ in their politics — we are not at war, after all, Applecore."

She frowned. "Begging your pardon, sir, but what happened to your cousin looked like war to me. And what with that young fella's heart showing up in a box, the Hollyhock folk might disagree with you, too, and all."

Theo could almost hear Tansy's mouth pursing in disapproval. "The ties between the great families and their Houses, especially between the masters of those Houses, are long and deep, Applecore. They do not cease simply because of political friction. And Foxglove and Thornapple have been friends since their days at Dowsing."

Theo watched Applecore squirm in frustration on the sinktop, but she said nothing more.

"Now," Tansy went on, "when you two get to the City, you must proceed immediately to Foxglove House. Applecore knows where it is, but if for some reason…" his hesitation this time had a grim shadow even Tansy could not hide, "… well, if the two of you happen to become separated, Master Vilmos, then you must go to Springwater Square by yourself. You cannot miss Foxglove House — it is the tallest tower on the square. Simply tell the guards that you bear a message from me to Lord Foxglove. Show them the device through which we are speaking now. That alone should be enough to ensure they take you seriously. If not, ask them to send a message to their master saying, 'Tansy bids you remember the River's Edge.' "

"The river's edge?" Applecore asked. "Did you save him from drowning?"

"What? No, it is the name of a tavern. One of the lower sort, I am ashamed to admit. But when we were both students at Dowsing Academy I helped Vivi Foxglove, as we called him then, out of a scrape there. He will remember."

Theo was having trouble wrapping his head around this. Here they were, making a secret phone call from the restroom of a train after having just watched their companion stabbed to death, and Tansy was acting like it was some Jeeves-the-Butler story. "You're taking what happened to your cousin pretty well."

"Does that mean you find me insufficiently upset about my loss, Vilmos?" Tansy's voice suddenly grew cold. "If so, we will have to agree to disagree. I will not lower myself to quibbling with your ill-informed interpretations."

"Sure. Whatever." Theo realized he had just insulted a guy who could help keep him alive, and he certainly needed help with that just at the moment. Chased by living corpses and slug-men, he thought. Hey, why not some of those — what are those bastards from The Hobbit called, black riders? Just to make things complete. "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

"Don't be ridiculous — I am not so easily offended," said Tansy, although his every tight-jawed word suggested otherwise. "Call me when you reach the City and I will instruct you what to tell Foxglove. I may contact him myself eventually, but until I find out where this terrible flaw in our security lies, I prefer to use only private devices like this."

An instant later, like a soap bubble popping in Theo's inner ear, the connection ended.

"Well," said Applecore as Theo put the phone-case away. "Well, well. Isn't this a shower of shite, and aren't we standing in it? I guess we might as well go back and sit down. No, I've got a better idea. Follow me."

Theo fell in behind her as she flew slowly toward the front of the train. Within moments they had moved into the next third-class coach, as full of odd shapes and faces as the one they had left. Still, it was interesting how quickly he was beginning to get used to it — if he half-shut his eyes, he could almost believe he was back home. Most of the passengers seemed to be drowsing as the train rushed and rattled on through the rainswept meadows.

"Where are we going?" Theo whispered.

She fell back to fly beside his ear. "Those hollow-fellas may not have got on the train, but they'll have been in touch with whoever hired 'em. That means if they were watching you, they'll have given out a description and someone may be looking for us when we get off."

"Shit, I should have thought of that. But why are we going up toward first class? I thought you said we'd be too obvious up there — that's why we're in the back."

"We're not going to first class — at least not to stand around. Now just walk and shut up talking."

Theo did as he was told.

"Here's where we should have put ourselves at the start," Applecore whispered as they passed through the nearest of the second-class coaches. There were a few of the more unusual fairy types here, but most of the travelers seemed to be office workers and laborers of more human shape. One or two of them glanced up as the pair made their way up the aisle, but they seemed more interested in the sprite than in Theo himself. "Would have blended in a bit. Wouldn't be getting into barneys with padfeet and your other troublemaking riffraff."

"I know I keep asking this, but where are we going?"

"Private compartments. Just this side of the dining car."

"But aren't those the really expensive ones?"

"Yes. But they're also the ones people won't be sitting in if they're having a meal or a scoop in the club car."

"I don't understand…"

"By the Trees, Vilmos, but you ask a lot of bloody questions! Just shut your gob for a bit and you'll see!" Her hissing voice was loud enough to make a few of the second-class passengers look up from their magazines or their own conversations. Theo's heart sped. This isn't just about making a scene, he reminded himself. This is about getting noticed and maybe getting killed. I have to trust her. He stared straight ahead and kept walking.

They stepped through into the rattling space between coaches. He could smell something in the agitated air here, something like electrical ozone, but also a bit like burning sugar — the magic that made the train run, he guessed. "Now I'll explain!" Applecore said, almost shouting to be heard above the noise of the wheels. "We're looking for somebody's luggage. We need to steal you some new clothes, in case anybody's looking for what you're wearing when we get off in Starlightshire."

"We're getting off?"

"We're sure as hell not going all the way to the City on this train — we might as well show up waving a flag with your name on it. Like Tansy said, they must have their hands on someone in his house. Those pale-faced fellas knew exactly what train you were supposed to be on — that's why they were waiting down by the platform, and why they rushed right to this train when they couldn't find you after they killed Tansy's cousin."

Theo flushed with embarrassment. "I hadn't thought of that."

"I noticed. So we're getting off, then we're going to find some other way into the City, or at least a way onto another train."

"And meantime?"

"We're thieving. So look for anyone's luggage left in their compartment. We'll hope they're in the bar instead of just the toilet, but we should be quick about searching anyway. You need some plain men's clothes, nothing too fancy." She tugged his ear again. "Stop — one more thing. Get out the shell Tansy gave you and look like you're talking on it. That'll give us an excuse to be walking up and down the passageway."

He again did as he was told, marveling at the difference between traveling with Applecore and with that idiot Rufinus — a dead idiot now, but that was no reason to sugarcoat his failings. Theo tried to look like all the self-absorbed businessmen he'd ever seen on his trips through office high-rises, so involved in their private conversations that Theo would have to dodge out of their way even though he was carrying a huge potted plant and they were carrying only a phone the size of a cigarette pack. As he walked he tried to cast surreptitious glances into the compartments. Most of them had at least one passenger; in general they seemed a prosperous and almost entirely wingless bunch who might all have been human for as much as a quick inspection would have told him.

"Quick — over against this wall," Applecore ordered as they reached the end of the coach. She tugged him over toward a small space between the end of the private compartments and the wall with the door leading to the dining car. Theo leaned against a fire hose and pretended to be deep in conversation as a conductor with tiny wings, a bluish cast to his skin, and a worried and distracted look on his face banged through the doors and walked briskly toward the back of the train, hardly sparing a glance for Theo.

When he had gone, Theo turned and started back down the length of the coach, still miming an urgent and absorbing conversation. Applecore, who had buzzed ahead of him down the passage, abruptly pulled up and began to wave her arms at him. Fairy-folk were observing him from inside their compartments so he tried not to run, but he felt terribly exposed and wished very much that he could find a seat somewhere and just hide behind his great-uncle's book.

"What is it?" he whispered.

She pointed. The compartment beside him was empty. A good-sized suitcase in shimmering midnight-blue fabric sat on one of the two overhead luggage racks. "And the one across the way has got its curtains pulled, so no one will see what we're doing," she said in his ear. "Let's get in and pull the ones on this side, too."

He took one brief look at the closed compartment across the passage, then slipped into the empty compartment and closed the black curtains.

"Take your time!" Applecore hissed. "Act as if you belong here, ya great eejit."

"Easy for you to say." He reached up, heart thudding, and fumbled down the surprisingly heavy case. "It's hard to imagine anyone in the universe who belongs here less than I do."

"You're a bit of a whiner, Theo, do ya know that?"

"And you're a bit of a… shit." He stared at the suitcase. "It's locked."

"Bugger. Let me have a look." Applecore put her eye against the bag's latch, then turned to Theo. "You wouldn't happen to have a hairpin, would you?"

"You know, I usually carry one…" It was a poor joke, covering rising fear. Any moment now the bag's owner would come back, there would be shouting and conductors called and then he'd be thrown in some weird Brothers-Grimm jail, just like Applecore had said. And then at night, when no one was paying attention… "Jesus. Jesus! Isn't there anything else we can use to open it?"

"I told you before, that name won't do anything but make people itch. Hold on till I think a bit."

Theo stood and stared at the suitcase with nervous intensity. "What else could we use besides a key?"

"Well, I've got a hatpin," said a new voice behind him. Theo jumped and dropped the suitcase onto the floor. It popped open, scattering clothes and small parcels of toiletries all over the compartment. "Oh! I suppose you won't need it now."

It was a girl, standing in the open doorway, dressed all in black with a long coat and close-fitting hat. No, maybe not a girl — how could you tell anything with these folks, anyway, especially age? — but certainly with every appearance of young womanhood. She had a heart-shaped white face and wide, startlingly violet eyes; all he could see of her hair beneath the hat was a tar-black curl on her forehead. "Oh, God," Theo said miserably. "Is this your suitcase?"

She looked at him curiously for a moment, almost startled, then a mischievous smile curled the corner of her mouth. "No. But now I'm rather certain it isn't yours, either. Are you thieves?"

"It's all a mistake," said Applecore decisively. "Just a mistake. Let's put this back and find our own compartment. Sorry if we disturbed you, my lady."

"Oh, a mistake. Well, that's all right, too. It's a long, dull trip." She smiled, showing Theo her small, perfectly white teeth. "If you're bored and want some company, my compartment's just across the corridor."

Applecore, who had flown to Theo's shoulder, gave him a little kick. "Oh!" he said. "That's very kind… my lady. But… but my… associate and I, we… we have a lot of work to discuss."

"Do you want any help picking up those clothes?" She seemed to be enjoying the whole terrifying, embarrassing mess more than she should have.

Good Christ, Theo thought, this is the first time I can ever remember in my whole life wanting a tornado to come down and suck an attractive woman out the window. "No! No, ma'am, we'll be fine. Thank you."

"See you in the dining car, perhaps? Are you going all the way to the City?"

"No." Another kick from Applecore. "I mean, yes! Perhaps we'll see you."

When the girl had slipped back into her own compartment and discreetly drawn her own curtains again, Theo clawed through the clothes, which did at least appear to be a man's (as far as he could tell with his weak knowledge of fairy-fashion). He found a pair of shimmery gray trousers and a white shirt with long, wide sleeves. "Should I look for anything else? Shoes?"

"Don't make it too obvious — besides, you're not trying to look rich, just different than you looked before. You can roll up the arms on the shirt and we'll get back to Third Class. You'll look like a mill worker who had a job review today or something."

Theo stuffed the rest of the clothes back into the suitcase and heaved it onto the rack, then rolled up the purloined shirt and pants and tucked them under his arm. He opened the compartment door and let Applecore check to see if the passage was empty, then followed her out. Except for what might have been a twitch at the drawn curtains of the young woman's compartment, nobody seemed to notice. His pounding heart finally began to slow a little — but not much.

They stopped at the first lavatory once they had reached second class. "Go change," Applecore told him. "Then we'll head on back to one of the compartments where they won't be so likely to notice you weren't there at the beginning of the trip."

"You mean we're not going back to the same seats?"

"And sit down wearing different clothes that just got stolen from first class? It's asking for it, isn't it?"

He stepped out of the restroom a few moments later, as exhausted from all the anxiety as if he had run several miles. The clothes were a decent enough fit, although the pants were a little on the short side. "Good thing I lost weight after my mom died," he said.

"Sorry to hear about your ma, Theo," said Applecore gently. "Now shut it and walk."

Applecore chose a seat on the aisle in a cluster of sleeping house-boggarts — or that was how she described them; to Theo they just looked like more midgets, with bristly beards and bristly eyebrows at least as thick as the beards. The land outside hadn't changed much during their sojourn among the upper classes; the skies were still murky gray above the rain-soaked meadows, so that Theo couldn't even guess what lay beyond the mist that topped the first line of low hills, although he imagined it was more of the same.

"Do you think she's going to tell anyone about us?"

Applecore, who was nodding on his shoulder, gave a sleepy grunt. "That girl? P'raps. Not much we can do about it, 'less you were planning to murder her."

"No! But…" Of course, what else was there for them to do? This might be quaint and picturesque Fairyland, but the train was still moving fast enough to kill anyone who jumped off. "I just… why didn't she get upset? She knew what we were doing."

"She's a Flower — who knows what that lot thinks? Probably thought it was some kind of prank."

Theo sat back and pulled out his great-uncle's book but he couldn't focus on the words. Come on, Vilmos. If you ever needed to study, this is the time. Just because you screwed up college doesn't mean you can't learn something important now… But his brain felt like an animal in a too-small cage. "Where are we?" he asked suddenly.

"Root and Stem! Can't you let a body get some rest? It's bad enough I have to chase around without you murder me sleep, too." She rearranged herself. "We're still in Great Rowan, but we started out close to the border. Be glad — you could be traveling for days, otherwise."

"Which border?"

She groaned again. "And now he's going to make me think." She did so for the space of several heartbeats. "It's two days 'til the moon changes, right? So we'll be crossing into Hazel Wand. That's where Starlightshire will be this time."

"This time?" He had been reading something about this when the padfoot had started making trouble, but it hadn't made any sense. "You mean your towns and cities aren't always in the same place?"

"No, ya thick. The towns are always in the same place, it's the railroad stations that aren't. Well, they're always in the same place on the railroad, I guess, so you're half-right."

"What the hell are you talking about? You're telling me somewhere like that big town we were just in — that it moves? What, just gets up on its legs and walks to somewhere new?"

Applecore fluttered over to the seat in front of him, balancing carefully just behind the furry head of something large enough to take up two seats by itself, and whose snores Theo had mistaken when they first sat down for something caught in the train's wheels.

"Look, you." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Penumbra Fields — that's a commuter town, I told you. Grew up around Penumbra Station. So it's always, what is it, eleven stops from the City, no matter what province it's in. Starlightshire will be the same way 'cause it's a station-town. Oxeye Station, though, that's the Daisy station, see, and it's always in Great Rowan Field because the Daisy commune is always in Great Rowan. The train that goes through Oxeye Station is a local line — that's how you can tell it's local, see, because it's always in Great Rowan."

Theo shook his head, which was beginning to hurt. "But you said we could have left from Oxeye Station, we just thought it would be more dangerous," he said quietly. "How would that have worked if the stations that connect to the City are always moving around? I don't think I'm getting this."

"All local lines connect to a main station — it's just not always the same main station."

"Oh." He let his head fall back against the seat. "Well, that's crystal clear."

"I'm glad." Applecore was either missing the sarcasm or just wanted to get back to her nap.

He picked up Eamonn Dowd's book again, hoping for some mortal's-eye clarification of Fairyland's insane transportation system, which was beginning to seem like some high-school roleplaying game full of arbitrary, nonsensical rules, but Theo still couldn't concentrate well enough to read. He gave up and stared out the rain-spotted window, exhausted by his terrifying day but trying not to doze, waiting for a heavy (and probably anything but human) hand to fall on his shoulder, a voice to announce that the jig was up. It took him a moment to realize that he was staring at moving shapes in the distant hills.

Dark figures, perhaps a dozen in all, were riding down into one of the meadows. They dropped out of sight behind the train so quickly that he thought for a moment he had indeed been drowsing and dreaming, but a few moments later the train passed another cluster of riders reined up in the deep meadow, watching the train with a yellow-eyed intensity that made Theo extremely nervous. This group was much closer: even in the brief moments while the train swept past he could see that their clothes were dark but fantastical even by fairy standards, voluminous head scarves and billowing robes tied with strips of ribbon. The downpour did not seem to bother them. Each of the riders had a spear or goad in his hand and what looked like a rifle strapped on his back. What he could see of their narrow, long-nosed faces looked oddly familiar, but even that was not what made Theo reach up a hand to poke the little fairy on his shoulder awake.

Each of the horselike animals on which the riders were mounted had a single glossy horn in the middle of its forehead.

"Applecore? Applecore? There are people… or whatever… outside the train. Watching us. They're… they're riding unicorns."

He felt her wings buzz into motion beside his ear, tickling him. She hung before the window watching as they passed another group of the riders, these a bit farther away and riding parallel to the tracks, their every sure-seated movement suggesting that they could go as fast as the train if it were worth the bother. Looking at their lightning-legged mounts, Theo wondered if that might not be true.

When they had passed this last group, the stormswept plains were deserted again.

"Shite and onions!" Applecore said, but it sounded more like wonder than apprehension. "You don't see that very often."

"Who are they?"

"Grims. Wild goblins, I guess you'd call 'em. They live out in the wastelands and the mountains with their herds of sheep and cows, but they almost never come near the railroad or the cities. I've heard of some towns out in Ash and Alder where they show up to trade hides and some herbs and things, but that's the first time I've seen them in Great Rowan."

"Are they going to attack us?"

She gave him a look of puzzled amusement. "No, why? Is that something that happens where you come from?"

"No." He thought of all the Western movies he had seen with vengeful Indians riding down on a train, whooping and blazing away at the helpless passengers. "Well, not lately. Not where I live."

"Well, there used to be bandits here, too. But it's been a deadly long time, and I've never heard of it happening since the last Goblin War, and certainly not since the Winter Dynasties." She shook her head. "Grims on the plains of Great Rowan. I wonder where they're going? Strange days."

She was just settling herself back on his shoulder, and he was trying to decide whether he dared fall asleep himself, when the pitch of the train's engines began to change. At first Theo wasn't even certain what he was hearing — the locomotive already sounded quite different from its earthly counterpart, the engine sounds more a low rushing and humming than a puffing choo-choo — but he found himself leaning forward. He could feel the motion changing even before the first screech of the brakes.

"The train's stopping." Whatever was happening, he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to like it. "Are we there yet?"

"We bloody well are not," Applecore said. "We're an hour out of Starlightshire, at least."

"Maybe those goblins are angry and they've blown up the tracks. Maybe your Great Fairy Chief spoke to them with a forked tongue or something." The train had definitely stopped. Many of his fellow passengers had woken up and were talking among themselves, clearly less worried by this than he was. He tried to calm himself.

"You do talk a load of old shite sometimes, Theo. But it won't hurt to find out." She buzzed up off his shoulder and started down the aisle at ankle level, but passengers were beginning to get out of their seats and she quickly rerouted to an airspace just below the ceiling. Theo sank down and did his best to look like a half-asleep fairy on the way home from visiting perfectly normal fairy-friends or something. He couldn't see where Applecore had gone — some of the other passengers had stopped on their way back from the restrooms and were standing in the aisles, looking out the windows and speculating.

He spotted her coming back to him about a second before she arrived; she was going so fast that she had to beat her wings hard to stop.

"This is very bad, Theo," she said. "They've stopped the train."

"I know they've stopped the train! Who are 'they'?"

"Constables have just got on. But that's not the bad part. One of those hollow-men is with 'em. He's leadin' 'em down the aisles, looking for someone. What do you want to bet it's us?"

"Oh… fuck."

"Hold on till I get into your shirt."

"What?"

"If it's one of those fellas that was in the station and he's just been up with the driver till now, then he'll probably be looking for a big one like you with a little one like me. So I'm going to get out of sight. Meanwhile, you're dressed different. He may not recognize you — we don't know how close they saw you. And that sort of troll doesn't see that well, anyway."

"Are you suggesting I just sit here? What do you mean, don't see that well?"

"With their eyes. They're cave trolls. But their hearing and smell are sharp, so don't you say a damn word no matter what — it would only get you in trouble anyway. Just show your ticket and pretend you're deaf or somethin'."

"No, bad idea." He shook his head frantically. "Stay here — bad idea. Run away — much better idea."

"What, you think they won't have someone at the back of the train? I saw the uniforms — these aren't village plodders or even shireblades, these are Field Special Constables and that lot aren't stupid. Just sit tight." And with those words she clambered down his shoulder, over his collar, and into his shirt. A moment later he could feel her feet and hands as she braced herself against the inside of the stolen garment and belayed herself a little farther down, her torso pressing against him as she flattened herself against his chest. It was a bizarrely intimate sensation, like having a living Barbie doll squirming against his bare skin.

Thank God I'm probably going to die right now, he thought in a surge of near-delirium. Because otherwise this would put me in therapy for years.

"Don't you dare bump into anything," she hissed from a spot just to the side of his left nipple. "You'll smash me like a bug."

"Should I call Tansy? Maybe he could vouch for me or something."

"He'll do no such thing. He's not a fool. If they've stopped the train and put the Specials on to find you, it's probably because they've found Rufinus and someone's blamed it on you. Tansy on the phone won't make them change their minds and it will make him look very bad."

"Shit! So there's nothing we can do?" For a moment he thought he might throw up, then his stomach and everything else inside him seemed to turn to a single block of ice as the door at the front end of the compartment opened and a pair of armed fairies with padded vests stepped through. Behind them came a horribly familiar shape dressed all in dark clothes, slouch hat pulled low, face gleaming beneath the brim like the belly of a fish.

Theo watched helplessly as the two officers, prompted by whispered comments from the hollow-man, moved slowly down the aisle. The constables both had wings, or seemed to: their padded, dark-gray body armor certainly bulged behind their shoulders. They wore wraparound mirrored sunglasses, the kind Theo had seen on every highway patrol officer who had ever pulled him over and listened with blank-faced contempt to his stammered excuses, although these seemed to shine with a light of their own, like luminous mother-of-pearl. In fact, their heavy gloves had a faint glow to them, too — not so much a radiating light as a weird visual intensity. But most disturbingly, both constables carried what looked like heavy machine pistols, menacing slate-colored things whose magazines were not rectangular but shaped instead like… hand grenades? No, something more organic… pineapples?

No, bees' nests, he realized — they looked like some kind of modern-art beehives.

Something wriggled on his breastbone, then Applecore poked her head up above his collar to sneak a look. "Shite!" she hissed, "they must think you're the one who burned down the Cathedral or somethin'. They've got Hornets." With a little grunt of despair, she slid back down under his shirt again.

The police weren't actually asking many people for tickets or documents. As they got closer, Theo was fractionally relieved to see that the constables themselves looked a little bored, as though they had already decided that their superiors had sent them on a wild goose chase. But the hollow-man was not bored in the least: like a dog reluctant to be led away, he leaned in between the policemen to sniff as the group moved slowly down the aisle.

Theo sank lower in his seat. He thought about lifting the book, but such a show of nonchalance seemed no different than screaming out his guilt. Every other passenger was watching the threesome coming down the aisle with sick fascination and many of them looked only a little less full of guilty panic than Theo himself.

This isn't a happy place, he realized. It wasn't before I got here. Fairyland is in bad times.

To his astonishment, the police moved right past him, the dull glow of their sunglasses sliding over him as though he were nothing, a bug.

Yes! he wanted to shout. I'm a bug! I don't matter!

The hollow-man's shadowed face swept across him and for an instant Theo thought he saw a glimmer as the tiny, piggy eyes beneath the hat touched his, paused for a split-instant, considered. Theo's heart seemed to swell until it was too large to beat. The hollow-man peered at him, flicked a glance at the trembling boggart next to him, then stepped past and began surveying people in the next row.

Theo's gaze rolled up to the ceiling and he sagged. For a moment, he thought he might faint from sheer, hysterical relief. Then, just as he was about to let out the breath he'd been holding for so long that sparkly lights were dancing along the edge of his vision, the pale, half-hidden face swiveled back in his direction. The head went down and Theo heard a loud, whuffling noise, then the hollow-man reached out a hand, flashing an inch of clammy white between black glove and black sleeve, and touched the elbow of one of the police constables.

"Back here," the hollow-man rasped. The voice was awkward, aphasic, as if the creature spoke with organs forced to adapt to speech but meant for some other task. "There is… something… someone…"

The police turned around and came back in Theo's direction, following the damp-faced thing as it sniffed the air like a hunting hound. From beneath the hat's brim, the tiny eyes sought Theo out and found him again and this time they did not slide away.

"Yes," the troll said. "Ah, yes. There you are."

16 POPPY

"There you are!"

Theo knew the voice, but he was too stunned with terror to figure out whose it was or why he recognized it. The armed constables had turned around and the hollow-man was leading them right back to him, but they all stopped at the sudden cry.

"What are you doing back here, you wicked thing?" The violet-eyed girl in black swept down the aisle from first class, her long coat flaring like the wings of a bat. The police stared at her openmouthed, and Theo was no less boggled: she seemed to be talking to him. "Did you think I would nap all day?" She turned and announced to the entire carriage, "It's true I'm a liberal employer, but really! I ask you!" She stopped beside Theo and gave him a little slap on the back of the head. "Get up, you great oaf. I am very angry with you. I rang my bell for simply minutes and there was no sign of you. Back here gambling and trading filthy stories with the rest of the no-accounts, I'm sure." As Theo stared at her in stunned surprise and Applecore squirmed in blind confusion beneath his shirt, the young woman turned a brightly amused smile on the two police constables. "Has my servant stolen something? If so, you have my permission to take him out and shoot him on the spot!" The smile bent into a mock-frown. "But Daddy and Mummy are so very fond of him. Perhaps I shouldn't have him shot after all."

"It is… some kind of trick," the hollow-man said, lurching forward. He turned toward the Field Special Constables. "He is the one — I am sure of it…"

"Get up, Quaeus, and tell me what you have done to offend this… moist person." The young woman got her hand under Theo's elbow and pulled until he struggled onto his feet. Everybody in the entire car was watching, every slotted eye and triangular bat ear aimed straight at them. Theo was so nonplussed that it took him long moments to realize the girl was trying to push something hard and thin into his hand. For an insane moment he thought it was a knife, thought she was trying to encourage him to attack the well-armed police.

"I… I don't know." He could barely form the words.

"He is a murderer," the hollow-man grated. "He has killed a young Flower lord in Penumbra Station only a few hours ago." Many of the onlookers gasped at this assertion and stared at Theo with bright, fascinated eyes. Whispers ran through the carriage like wind through wheat.

"Rubbish," said the young woman. "He has not left my side all day until I lay down to take a nap a few minutes ago. We never even got out at Penumbra Station. Show them your ticket, Quaeus."

Theo looked down at the thing in his hand, a wafer-thin rectangle that seemed to have been sliced off a gemstone like a piece of pastrami, then looked up at the woman. She smiled encouragingly. "He is a bit stupid as you can see," she told the officers, "and he's a trial to me sometimes, but he would never harm anyone."

Theo held out the special ticket in a shaking hand. The constables looked at it with something like awe, but the hollow-man ignored it, staring at Theo and the young woman with a hatred that even his hat and shrouding garments did not conceal.

After he had held the ticket for a moment in his radiant glove, one of the constables passed the crystalline wafer back to Theo. The expression on the fairy-policeman's high-boned face, bored a few minutes earlier, was now electrified. "All in order."

"Now come back to the compartment, Quaeus," the young woman said. "When we get home, I'm afraid you will have to be punished for causing such trouble."

"Sorry to have bothered you, milady," said the other policeman.

"Yes, sorry to have bothered you, Lady Thornapple," said the one who had examined the ticket, who still looked as though he had briefly been allowed to tread on the steps of heaven.

The young woman laughed. "Lady Thornapple is my mother. You need only call me 'Mistress Thornapple.' "

"Yes, La… Yes, Mistress Thornapple."

The hollow-man let out a hiss that turned into a sputtering whisper. He shook his head in fury, writhing eel-like, as though he had no bones in his neck. "Are you fools going to let him walk away? Are you going to be taken in by this crude trick?"

"Shut up, you," one of the constables said. "First off, I told you, nobody's found a body in Penumbra Station. We checked."

"Then it's been hidden by this man or his associates," the hollow-man declared. "I witnessed the murder!"

The constable looked at him with obvious distaste. "Fine. Then how do you like this? This woman's father is First Councillor of the realm — what are you but a jumped-up private op? Now, do you want to finish this search, or are you going to waste more of our time here?"

The hollow-man seemed about to let out a shriek or leap at the constable's throat. Instead he turned toward Theo's rescuer and made a rubbery bow, but there was a nasty glint from the eyes beneath the hat brim. "I do not know what game you are playing, milady, but for now you have the advantage."

The woman in black's only reply was to laugh as she tugged Theo away up the aisle.

"I think we'll go to the club car," she said cheerfully as they passed through the loud connector between coaches. "That horrid person seemed extremely angry. He'd be a fool to try anything after all that, with so many witnesses, but we won't tempt him by isolating ourselves."

"What in the name of the Trees is going on out there?" shouted Applecore, struggling to fight her way loose from inside Theo's shirt.

"Ah, it's your little friend," said the young woman. "Well, I suppose she can come too. What do you drink, dear?"

Applecore fell back into the shirt as they bumped through the sliding door into the club car; her reply was lost against his midsection.

"I'm so pleased." The young woman collapsed into a booth. "This looked like being such a dull trip." Theo sat down carefully, not only to protect Applecore, who was still squirming around inside his clothing, but because he felt that if he moved too quickly his head might come off and roll under the table.

"Uh… thank you," he said. "For everything."

"Not at all," she replied. "What would you like to drink? You really must have at least one drink before we begin our torrid affair."

A head the size of a grape poked out of Theo's collar. It scowled. "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but what the hell are you playing at?"

"Why — is he yours?"

"Not as such, no — but I'm the one looking after him. Did I hear that you're a Thornapple?"

The young woman rolled her eyes. "By birth, not by choice. The Trees know I'd just as soon have been born into an ordinary family like the Stocks or the Loosestrifes."

"An ordinary family with pots of money, then," said Applecore quietly, but the woman did not seem to hear. Theo could only stare in dazed astonishment at the exotic black-haired creature who had saved him. Just five minutes earlier he had been certain he was going to die; now his personal Tinker Bell was apparently arguing with this glamorous Goth princess about whether the newcomer would get to make love to him or not.

"So who are you?" he asked suddenly. "How did you get them to leave us alone, exactly? And who's… Kways?"

"Quaeus. He's one of our servants. He often travels with me — that's why I carry an open ticket for him — but he's back helping the family get ready for the funeral."

"Funeral?"

She went on as though he hadn't spoken. "They sent my old governess and a bodyguard to come back with me instead, but I wasn't going to put up with that so I left before they arrived."

Confused, Theo looked to Applecore, who had clambered out and was sitting on a saltshaker, her feet danging above the tabletop, but the sprite only shook her head. Theo decided she didn't look very happy about what was going on, which was odd considering the alternatives.

"You don't know about the funeral?" the young woman said. "It's been on all the mirror streams. I'll tell you, but be a hero first and get me a drink… oh, I don't know your name!"

"Theo." As soon as he said it, he looked guiltily at Applecore, who was indeed scowling. Ah, well, too late to come up with a pseudonym now.

"What an odd name! Sounds like it could be something out of Ash or Alder — or one of the Willow farming families." She smiled dazzlingly. "My name is Poppaea, but everyone calls me Poppy. Now do be an absolute Rose and get me a drink, will you?"

"Ummm, what should I get?" And how should I pay, he also wanted to ask.

"Don't be silly — the barman knows what I want. Just tell him to put it on my tab."

That problem solved, Theo wandered off across the dark compartment. He was grateful to see that most of the tables were unoccupied, perhaps only a dozen drinkers in the entire long coach, mostly solitary or in quiet-talking pairs. The whole club car had a hush about it that he had experienced only on his trips bearing floral tributes to high-powered executive offices — the stillness of lives heavily insulated by money. Almost everyone in the car was on the handsomely human end of the Fairy spectrum. They must have another bar for riffraff like me and the guys with wings and hooves, Theo thought.

If the bartender had wings, he kept them well-hidden. He had the long, saturnine look of an actor who might have been asked to play Iago a few times. "For Mistress Thornapple, yes?" He already had a cocktail shaker in his hands. "Anything for you, sir?"

"Yeah." Theo realized he had no idea what constituted a social drink in Fairyland. Did they have vodka? Or would it be something more like eye of newt, toe of frog? "I'll have the same as she's having."

He brought the two frosted glasses and the two shakers back on a tray. As he slid into the booth, Applecore gave him a hard look from atop the salt-shaker. "Did you get anything for me?" she asked. "Or was the simple pleasure of having been inside your shirt supposed to last me all day?"

Oh, my God, what's this about? Theo wasn't always the quickest guy around the block, but there was something going on here that sounded a lot like jealousy. This from a tiny person who had already said she thought he was shallow and selfish? He took the shot glass — the smallest he had been able to find — out of his pocket and put it down beside her. "I thought you and I could share."

She was a little mollified, but not much. "Share that? What is it?"

He shrugged and turned to Poppy Thornapple, who was sipping her drink with obvious and even somewhat theatrical relish. "I got myself the same thing as you, but I don't know what it is."

"It's called a Wingbender — it's dreadfully lower class. I love it." She took in Applecore's flinch but didn't quite seem to understand. "Hawthorn berry liqueur and pomegranate juice, mostly, plus just the tiniest pinch of mandrake and something else I've forgotten, now. And a little honey-sugar on the rim of the glass, of course." She took a long, savoring swallow.

Applecore shook her head. "I don't think I want any more fermented berries," she said quietly to Theo. "Thanks, but."

"Father hates it when I drink in public," the young woman said suddenly. A tiny spot of color came to each impressive cheekbone. "Father hates it when I do anything in public."

"You said you were going to a funeral, didn't you?" Theo shook his head — already he was losing track of what they were talking about. He lifted his drink and sampled it cautiously. It was strange, quite bitter around the edges, which played surprisingly against the honey flavor, but not out of the range of the odder cocktails ordered by some of his dates in the pre-Catherine days. It did set up a tiny humming somewhere at the back of his head, and now he seemed to remember that mandrake could poison you. He set the glass back down.

"Oh, yes, the funeral." Poppy rolled her eyes again. "Dreadful, the whole thing. It's my brother, Orian. He got himself killed in some waterfront dive. They say it was a goblin. I suppose it could have been." She gave a strangely cheerful little shudder, like someone recalling a particularly good horror movie. "It's all a ghastly waste of time. I hate traveling during holidays."

Applecore almost slipped off her salt-shaker. "Your brother? Your brother was killed and you think the funeral's a waste of time?"

The look she got back was half-annoyance, half-amusement. "You didn't know him, dear. A horrible, mean boy even when we were all little." She looked at Applecore. "Oops. Didn't mean to be rude. When we were young, I should have said. Anyway, he tormented my sisters and me. He killed my little dog. On purpose, in front of me." Her voice had grown very flat. "And he got worse when he left school. But he was the apple of Father's eye, so everyone in the family is acting terribly, terribly bereaved." She waved her hand. "Call me heartless if you want to. Father insisted I come back for the funeral, so here I am." She stared at her drink for a long moment, then suddenly looked up at Theo. "Why don't you come to the funeral with me? We wouldn't have to stay long. It's going to be at the family vault in Midnight, just outside the Trees. I know a very nice private club less than an hour away from there, in Eventide. We could slip off." She emptied her glass and clicked it down on the table, staring at Theo with feverish interest; he suddenly realized this wasn't anywhere near the girl's first drink of the day. "I'm sure your small friend has other things to do in the City. Wouldn't you like to spend a little time with me?"

He sat blinking in startled silence for so long that he decided she would think he was trying to communicate in semaphore. There was a painful brittleness to her. She was beautiful, but just as obviously a bit unstable — not to mention the fact that several different kinds of unpleasant things were busily trying to kill him. Embarrassed, he glanced at Applecore, but she only stared stonily at their rescuer. "I… I… that's very… generous…"

"Ooh," Poppy said suddenly. "That's gone right through me. You will excuse me while I make a quick trip to the necessity, won't you… Theo, wasn't it? Funny name."

"Uh, sure. Certainly."

She slid out of the booth and made her way with a kind of unbalanced grace down the aisle and out the far end of the compartment.

"Rich hussy," said Applecore. "That's the way they get, some of them. No one ever to teach them right from wrong, and nothing to do with their lives but spend the family's gold."

Theo almost smiled. His companion, for all her stated disdain for politics, was a bit of a pocket Marxist. "She's all right. She saved our lives."

"It's a game to her, Theo!"

"Well, maybe we can get her to play the game a bit more. I don't really want to stay on this train. That… troll-thing… it wasn't happy."

Applecore nodded. "True. He won't do anything while those Specials are still on the train, but since they won't find any murderer, they'll get off again in Starlightshire. Of course, even if he lets us alone 'til then, he might have more of his friends waiting when we reach the City."

"So maybe the girl can help us somehow. She saved us once. And who else is going to help us? Who?"

"You can't trust her just because she says she likes you! She's a Thornapple!"

"So?"

She buzzed so close that trying to watch her angry face made him cross-eyed. "Do you pay no attention at all, ya thick? She's a Thornapple. Her da's the First Councillor — one of the biggest fellas in all of Faerie. And he's a Chokeweed — he's Lord Hellebore's number one ally, which means he wants to see all your kind dead. Some girlfriend you've chosen!"

"Girlfriend?" He pulled his head back so he could focus. "What are you talking about? We need help. Badly. Now sit down where I can see you and talk to me. Please."

Applecore lit on the table, scowling. "You're a babe in the wilderness, Theo. Do you have that expression where you come from?"

"Yes. And maybe I am, but…"

He was interrupted by Poppaea Thornapple, making her way down the aisle with an absorbed expression on her face — a face that was looking less and less alien to Theo: he was beginning to see her just as attractive. Very attractive. And he hadn't been with a woman in quite some time…

"Just back me up," he whispered to Applecore. "You know, make sure I don't say anything too stupid." The sprite looked as though she'd rather push him off the train, but she didn't argue.

Young Mistress Thornapple was moving with exaggerated care because she had a Wingbender in each hand. "I brought you another," she said as she slid into the booth. Theo couldn't help wondering if she was as slender under all those clothes as she looked.

"I'm still drinking the first one."

"Ah, well. Wouldn't do to be caught short. They close the bar when they pull into Starlightshire." She turned to look out the window. The landscape was less wild here: an occasional house could be seen half-hidden in the forested hills, and some of the open meadow actually looked as though it had been mowed. "We'll be there soon."

"The thing is, Poppy…" He took a breath. He had spoken confidently to Applecore, but the little fairy was right — he didn't know much of anything, and he was about to cross a line. This young woman was part of a powerful family that wanted him dead. He was nervous all over again. "The thing is, what that troll, that… hollow-man… said was partway true."

"That you're a criminal? Darling, I know that. I found you and your little friend opening peoples' suitcases, didn't I?" Her long, uptilted eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, did you truly kill someone? That's… that's quite impressive!"

"No! No, we didn't kill anyone. But we know the fellow who was killed. We were traveling with him. It was that white-faced troll and his friends who killed him."

"By the Inner Ring!" Poppy Thornapple seemed almost more pleased than upset. She thinks it's exciting, Theo realized. She's treating this all as some huge diversion. "And now they want to kill you, too! And I'm the one who saved you."

"Yes, yes, you did. But that's not going to make any difference if we stay on the train all the way to the City. They'll just be waiting for us there."

"Then you must come home with me!" She leaned forward. "We have a huge place. Daddy never minds if I bring anyone home. Daddy never even notices — he's always working."

Great, thought Theo, I didn't think of that. Sure, we'll just drop over to the Fuhrerbunker for the weekend. He looked helplessly at Applecore.

"Yes, well, that's very kind, your ladyship," said the little fairy. You could hardly tell her teeth were clenched. "But when we get to the City, we have important business. The safety of the realm, like. And… and…" her inspiration dried up for a moment, but then came flooding back, "And we wouldn't want to put you in that sort of danger."

"No," said Theo gratefully. "Don't want to put you in danger. But we do need your help. Is there some way you can help us get into the City without taking the train all the way in?"

Poppy Thornapple was looking at him now with an interest that went beyond the merely carnal and had instead become something like real fascination. "Oh, yes," she said. "Of course. We can hire a coach. I don't carry much cash but I have oodles of tallies." She hadn't touched her most recent Wingbender at all. Now she pushed it to the side so she could set her small black purse on the table and begin sorting through it. "I even have a schedule — here!" She lifted out a small translucent oblong very much like the ticket she had earlier produced on Theo's behalf. "Oh, we're in luck — Starlightshire's in Hazel now. Otherwise we would have had to stay on until Trumpet Windhome."

"You'd do that for us?"

"Of course." She smiled hugely. "Oh, but look at me! Here I am, acting like a silly schoolgirl, when your friend's been killed." She tried, not entirely successfully, to look sad. "What was his name?"

Theo hesitated and Applecore jumped in. "Rufinus weft-Daisy, ma'am. I expect it will be in the news. He was Theo's… cousin."

"Such a strange name — Theo, I mean! Is it short for Theodorus or Theolian, or something else?"

"Theodorus, ma'am," said Applecore solemnly. "Theodorus weft-Daisy." She leaned toward her after casting a brief look of pity toward Theo. "Poor as ditchwater, ma'am," she whispered confidentially, "his whole branch of the family."

"Oh," said Poppy. Her violet eyes didn't leave Theo. "Brave, resourceful, and poor. How wonderful."

As the train passed through what was obviously the outskirts of a fair-sized town, they went back to Poppy's compartment and made sure to draw the curtains. When the train stopped, they waited for a couple of minutes that seemed much longer to Theo. Just as the conductor was calling the last boarding, they sent Applecore ahead to scout, then hurried down the corridor to the end of the compartment — or at least hurried as fast as they could with all Poppy Thornapple's luggage in tow.

"I can't believe you didn't call a porter," she said to Theo.

"No sign of Mister Tall-Dark-and-Damp anywhere," Applecore announced.

They joined the milling throng on the platform just as the doors closed and the train pulled out again. Theo looked up and saw a flash of white, masklike face pressed against the window in a darkened compartment like a greasy thumb on the glass, watching them with helpless rage.

"That's him," Applecore said. "We've done it, for a bit, anyway."

"Look, there are those charming little constables," said Poppy cheerfully. The commuters heading down the platform toward the station were eddying around the armored bulk of the Specials as though they were two large stones in a stream.

"I don't think we want them to see us," Theo said. "Since your tickets must have said you were going all the way back to the City."

"I suppose you're right…"

Theo took her hand — it was as cool as marble — and led her back up the platform. He didn't hold on very long, although she clearly didn't mind. They stopped by what he took for a phone booth (it was unlabeled and could have been some altogether stranger contraption for all he knew) and waited. When the constables had finally vanished into the station concourse, Theo picked up Poppy's two largest bags and began trudging down the platform.

"What have you got in here?" he asked breathlessly. "Homework from sculpture class or something?"

She laughed. "Shoes, in that one." She pointed at the smaller bag, which was still large enough that Theo felt like he was dragging a St. Bernard dog with a handle on its back. "A girl can't go home for two weeks and not have any shoes. The other one's mostly clothes."

Theo heard Applecore snort just behind his shoulder. He couldn't really argue with her assessment. "Haven't you people invented wheels on luggage here?"

"But all the porters have lovely little wheeled carts. Why would you want wheels on the cases, too? Is that some kind of fad out in Rowan this season?"

Theo shook his head.

Starlightshire Station was about the same size as Penumbra but without a dome, a long, low, barnlike structure with an open scaffolding roof trussed by metal bars. The space between the bars was not apparently empty as with Penumbra; instead there was a shimmer in the open spaces, a moving swirl of faint color like a soap bubble film waiting for breath. Theo didn't bother to ask about it. He had experienced enough inexplicable strangeness for one day.

As he watched the swirl of fairy nobles and rougher, stranger creatures moving across the concourse, Poppy pulled something that looked like a smooth silver wand out of her purse and spoke quietly into it. "They'll be here very shortly," she told Theo when she'd finished.

"Who?"

"The coach-hire people, silly. In fact, we should probably go wait out front."

"Then I'll have to hit the jacks again," Applecore announced. "Sorry to be crude, but facts are facts and my bladder feels like a frightened blowfish." She rose into the air and flew above the crowds toward the nearest wall. To Theo's surprise, instead of dropping down to door level she skimmed along about ten feet off the ground, then ducked into hole in the front of a small cubicle about the size of a shipping box, mounted high on the wall like a birdhouse. After spending a great deal of time in the restroom on the train, Theo had been wondering what kind of facilities there were for people Applecore's size; now he had a better idea.

"Is the sprite a… special friend of yours?" Poppy asked suddenly. "A sweetheart?"

"Applecore?" He was startled. Didn't the fact that he was about a hundred times bigger make the answer pretty obvious? "No. She's just a friend." He felt disloyal. "A very good friend. She's done a lot for me."

"Ah." She nodded and seemed satisfied. "Of course. Anyone else?"

"What?"

"Is there anyone else, back home or wherever? For you?"

He thought of Cat, so far away and undoubtedly so very happy not to be with him. "No. Not any more."

She brightened, then suddenly grew morose. "You must think I'm a little fool."

"No, of course I don't. You've been wonderful to us."

"I have…" She wouldn't meet his eye. "Well, I have a confession to make. Because I like you, Theo, and I wouldn't want you to go on thinking that… that…" She trailed off.

Oh, my God, he thought. She's called her family and they're on their way right now to arrest me and torture me in some weird fairy-dungeon. "Confession?" His voice was not as steady as he would have wished.

"I'm one hundred and five."

"What… ?"

"I'm one hundred and five years old." She still couldn't look at him. "I just wanted you to know. Because I do like you. Now you probably hate me."

He could only stare.

"I know I seem older. Well, sometimes. My parents think I'm a child, but I'm not — I've had lots of lovers already. But I didn't want you to find out and think I was trying to trick you. I'm not at university like you probably thought — I'm in my last year of Swansdown Academy. But I'm old enough to marry, you know, so I'm not that young!" Now she finally looked up, but seemed puzzled by the stunned expression on his face. "I don't mean you have to marry me!" She narrowed her extraordinary eyes a little. "So how old are you?"

Theo's stammering was interrupted by the return of Applecore. "Right," she said. "Me kidneys have sighted land again. Should we get going?"

Outside the station it was early evening and the lights were coming on all over Starlightshire, streetlamps and advertising signs, but they all seemed fainter than the electric lights Theo knew, even the simplest more silvery than ordinary white light and also more… witchy, was the only word he could summon. Thus, when the huge fog-colored car rolled up to the sidewalk in front of the station, silent as Charon's barge, he jumped a little. The driver stepped out and Theo was startled by what at first seemed like a familiar horselike face.

No, he realized, it's not Heath, just another doonie. He said a lot of them were drivers.

"Are you the parties wanting a ride to the City?" the driver asked. His greenish skin was heavily mottled with white — Theo wondered if he might be from something like the pinto branch of the family — and he wore a gray uniform whose sheen was only a little less pearlescent under the station's flood lamps than the car itself. "I need someone to signify, please."

Poppy bristled. "I told them who I was!"

"No offense, Mistress Thornapple. It's just the way things are these days. It's a shame, but there you go." He wagged his eyeless head apologetically and produced a small leather-bound book from the pocket of his coat. "A formality." He opened it to what seemed to Theo a pair of blank pages and held it out. Poppy held her small hand over it for a moment; the driver nodded and put it away again. The whole thing was so much like ceremonial magic and yet so similar to using a bar code reader that Theo was suddenly struck not by the strangeness of the Fairie world but by the previously unremarked strangeness of his own.

When they were seated in the deep and spacious passenger compartment with all Poppy's luggage stowed in the trunk, the car slid out of the station parking lot. Theo looked anxiously out the tinted windows for signs of someone watching them, but the crowd hurrying in and out of Starlightshire Station's lunar light seemed oblivious to them.

"It's about three hours to the City from here," said the driver. "Would you like to hear some music?"

"Oh, yes, please," said Poppy. From out of nowhere — or more likely from hidden speakers, but Theo couldn't simply dismiss the "from nowhere" theory after what he'd seen lately — a mournful air filled the car. The music seemed to occupy the center of a previously unimagined triangle whose three sides were Arab flutes, quiet polka changes played backward on the glockenspiel with a lot of reverb, and the noise of running water. Theo listened with fascinated attention. It was enchanting, almost literally so, like being hypnotized in the nicest possible fashion. At last the tune ended and a new one began, an even more improbable combination that was something like "Danny Boy" played at one-tenth normal speed and arranged for gong and sitar. This one had a vocal, a helium whisper like something sending back its last transmission as it drifted away into the void of space. The only words Theo could make out were "… far far far the mirror we are, the nearer star…"

"I love this tune," Poppy said happily. "Whatever happened to these people?"

"One-hit wonders?" Theo guessed.

Despite the fact that the third passenger was no larger than a parakeet, Poppy had squeezed herself against Theo and showed no signs of moving away. He was having a hard time not reacting to her; the feeling of a woman's firm leg pressed against his own was exactly as distracting in Fairyland as it would have been back in good old Mortalia.

But she's a hundred and five years old! Old enough to be a great-great grandmother — no, old enough to be dead! The mere thought of her in a romantic light should have felt like that film Harold and Maude, but it didn't, quite. Or what was that other one with Ursula Andress, where she's really like a million years old and turns into a mummy at the end… ? But that was bullshit, he told himself — she wasn't some really old woman who looked young by magic. She was young. Just not by the standards of his own world.

The real, seriously bad problem is that she's some important rich guy's daughter, and as far as they're concerned, she's just a schoolgirl. Like they don't have enough reasons to want to kill me already.

He looked over to Applecore, feeling guilty about the fact that he had somehow come to be holding one of Poppy Thornapple's hands again, and equally guilty that after realizing it he still hadn't disengaged, but the sprite had made herself a sort of nest in the corner of the seat, curled on Poppy's cloche hat, and was apparently sound asleep.

Thanks, he thought bitterly. Leave me here to figure out this weird-ass stuff by myself. Thanks a lot.

Poppy stirred beside him. "Can you open the roof?"

He only realized she wasn't talking to him but to the invisible driver when a panel opened in the ceiling of the car. Above them hung a sky full of huge stars like jellied fire, like Van Gogh's maddest visions made real.

"It's always nice in this part of the world," she said. "I can't wait until we're outside of town."

Theo was still catching his breath, staring at the stellar fireworks. "Why?" he croaked.

"Because it's so built-up around here these days and so bright, all the streetlights and everything make it hard to see the sky properly." She snuggled in close against him. "Do you like me just a little, Theo? Tell the truth."

"Yes. Yes, of course. You're a very nice… young woman."

He could hear the pout in her tone of voice. "That's the kind of thing people say about girls in the Young Blossoms — the girls that put together cobweb drives and bake sales to relieve starving goblins in Alder Head."

"All right, you're beautiful, too. But you know that."

"Really?" She rubbed her face against his upper arm, slow and comfortable as a fire-warmed cat. "That's better. Will you make love to me, then?"

He took a breath. "I don't think it's a good idea, Poppy. I'm…" He couldn't think of a way to say it that didn't sound like the worst kind of letting-someone-down-easy cliché. But it was true! It was actually true! "I'm not a very good person to be involved with right now. But you're lovely. I'm really glad I met you."

She raised her head a bit and regarded him with those huge eyes, the purple so dark that they seemed pools of total shadow even underneath the fierce starlight. "Truly? You wouldn't be lying to me just because I'm a hundred and five, would you?"

He nodded. "Truly."

"All right." She nestled into him once more. "Perhaps we shouldn't rush things, anyway. I don't want you just to go away like the others always do. Well, the ones I didn't want to go away. Some of the rest I couldn't chase away with black iron." Her eyes remained closed, but she smiled and covered her mouth with her fingers; she was still a little tipsy. "Sorry. Everyone says I have a shocking vocabulary." She yawned. "I think I'm going to sleep for a little while. It's been such a busy day…"

There was no sense of transition, but after a while he could tell by the limp heaviness of her body against him that she was asleep. The music played on, a long tapestry of soft flute-noises and droning chords that made him think of the wind moaning around mountaintops, but with a strange little backbeat that kept surfacing and then fading down into the mix again. Theo was reluctant to move or in any way break the spell. He felt as though he had stepped out of the tumultuous events of the past days into some dreamlike pocket of his own past, an eddy of time from his teenage days — a girl, a quiet car, the countryside sliding past the windows. But this girl's a century old and the countryside is full of unicorns and monsters.

For a moment the music dwindled. "Everyone all right back there?" asked the driver.

"Just fine," Theo replied. The music came back up, throbbing mysteriously, sugared now with the faint chirping of some stringed instrument. If there were crickets in Heaven, Theo thought, then listening to them must be something like this.

Music really did mean something to him, he realized, and it always had. It called to him, although there were no words to describe what it promised. It was like a secret language he never forgot how to speak, a hometown he could always return to when he tired of what life was throwing at him. From the moment he had first heard himself imitating the sounds that came from his mother's radio, before he even knew that what he was doing was called "singing," music had seemed like a place only Theo knew about and in which he was always welcome. Now he listened with joy to this strange, new music — the first hint of an entire world full of music he had never heard or even imagined, an idea as inviting as a kiss — and as he did so he stared at the sky. As Poppy Thornapple had suggested, the stars, already insanely bright, seemed to be growing even brighter as the car rolled deeper into the countryside darkness. At the same time, their gleam did not turn the sky around them blue, but made it seem even more unashamedly black.

The dark sky got darker. The stars got brighter. The music surrounded him, lifted him, even seemed to teach him things about this world he hadn't understood before he'd heard it. After a time he could not compute, Theo found himself carefully disengaging himself from Poppy Thornapple, moving her head from his shoulder and propping it with his own folded jacket. He lifted himself from the seat, putting first his head and then his shoulders out through the moon roof until he could spread his elbows on the roof of the car. The air that lashed his face was warm and just a little damp; he found himself wondering absently if rain clouds here moved like they did in the real world, or had patterns as confusing as the inconstant towns of Faerie.

But sweet as it was, the fertile-smelling air was barely on his mind or in his senses: with the lights of the town now far behind them and only the silvery beams of the car's headlights smearing the road ahead, the stars seemed to grow even grander and more dramatic, to flame like novas. He could see both their living, burning, gaseous immensity and their diamond hardness, as though they were cosmic and magical objects simultaneously. They filled the sky in all directions, and even the smallest shone so clearly that for the first time in his life he truly felt the world beneath him to be something adrift in a spherical sea of lights. At the same time, as the strange fairy melodies rose up around him and the moist wind tugged at his hair, he could see that beyond doubt they were also gems scattered across the fabric of the sky, or even the eyes of gods.

It was only when he slumped back down in his seat half an hour later that Theo realized that his cheeks were wet, and that he had been crying for a long time.

He woke to find something brushing against his nostril and a sneeze building.

"Don't you dare!" Applecore said sharply.

"Then get off my face." He scratched his itching nose and tried to sit up, but discovered that the Thornapple girl was draped over him, lying on his arm. Outside the car it was quite dark; the stars framed in the moon roof, while spectacularly beautiful by any earthly measure, were vastly reduced from what he had seen before.

"We're not in what's-it-called anymore," he said groggily.

"Starlightshire. Not for hours. We're just cutting across the edge of Ivy. We'll be in the City soon." The sprite's wings buzzed briefly as she lit on his knee. From what he could see of her by the dimly illuminated panels over the doors, she looked strained and edgy.

But why wouldn't she? he thought. This hasn't been any easier on her than me. Still, he did not want to be conscious right now — it felt like he hadn't slept in days. "Why did you wake me up?" he complained.

"Because we're going to be there soon and I need to talk to you before she wakes up."

"She's not so bad, you know."

"You would think that, wouldn't you?" Applecore crossed her arms over her chest. "But that's neither here nor there. We have to decide where to get out."

"Aren't we going to that, what was it… ?" He ransacked his fuzzy memory. "Springwater Square? To see that Foxglove guy?"

"No. Not unless you want to find out what happens to bad mortal boys who don't listen to their elders."

"Elders? Oh, my God, how old are you?"

"Old enough to think with my head and not other parts of me, thank you very much. I don't care what Tansy says, we're not going to put ourselves in that Foxglove's hands. Those Flowers think they know everything, but I've been in the City lately and I've heard what people there are saying. That Foxglove and…" she lowered her voice, making Theo lean as far toward her as he could with Poppy's head in his armpit, "… and this girl's father are thick as thieves. And they're both chummy with Lord Hellebore, and that's about as bad as news can get."

"Who's Hellebore? I think I've heard the name before."

"We've time to talk about it later. Right now, you let me do the talking to your girlfriend here."

"She's not…"

Poppy was stirring. She lifted her head and brushed a strand of ink-black hair out of her eyes. She wore it cut short, shorter even than Applecore's hacked red bob, but without the hat her bangs seemed continually in her eyes. "Theo… ? Are we there?"

"Not yet," Applecore said shortly. "Go back to sleep."

She sat up, yawning and stretching. "Shade and stream, I must be a terrible sight! I'll have to ask the driver to stop somewhere so I can freshen up before we reach town."

"That's just what I wanted to talk to you about, Mistress," Applecore began, but the girl sat up straight on the seat and took Theo's hand.

"Look, we are here. I told you it wouldn't take long."

They were coming around a hillside bend and for a moment Theo, looking a bit stupidly at the smoked glass that separated them from the driver's seat, couldn't understand what she was talking about. Then he saw the first of the lights framed in the window beside him.

It was immense, so wide that it seemed to fill the entire horizon. At this distance he couldn't make out individual buildings but only the lights that filled the wide, flat valley between the hills, a monstrous wash of lights as though someone had spilled a wheelbarrow full of diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires across the ground, as though the stars through which he had flown earlier had drifted down from the sky and piled up like snowflakes.

"It's… it's big." He wasn't certain he'd ever seen any earthly city so large — it had to be in the range of New York or Tokyo or Mexico City, at least — but he also found he didn't care much about comparisons just now. It was majestic and stunningly beautiful and, because the lights were just a few tones off from what he was used to, more than a little alien. His heart was beating very quickly, and not simply from wonder: there was fear, too, at something both so monumental and so utterly indifferent to him.

He swallowed, staring in silence for what might have been half a minute, then at last began to sing in a quiet voice, "They say the neon lights are bright, on Broadway…" He gave the old tune a long, slow bluesy read, then, when no one objected, sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," and an old Journey song from his childhood about city lights, and finished off his impromptu urban medley with "New York, New York."

"If I can make… it… there, I'll make it anywhere…" Yeah, they call this whistling past the graveyard, he thought as he neared the end. But what the hell.

"You have such a pretty voice, Theo," Poppy said, squeezing his hand. "I've never heard any of those songs — I haven't even heard music like that. Where is it from?"

"Another world," he told her, then fell silent again before the awesome spread of light.

17 THE HOTHOUSE

The Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles admired the way in which he had been kept waiting. Even in the midst of world-changing events, Nidrus, Lord Hellebore, had taken the opportunity for a small assertion of power and status. An hour sitting in a deceptively uncomfortable chair in his lordship's outer office, with only Hellebore's pale and silent secretary for company, had made the point handily.

The Remover wondered if the secretary was always so pale and silent, and whether it was her habit so scrupulously to avoid looking at those her master kept waiting. He did, after all, have a certain effect on people, even when he was spruced up to go visiting. Even very strong charms could not make him look entirely… acceptable.

"His lordship will see you now," she announced with her back still toward him. A door opened in the wall, silent as a petal falling to the ground; reddish light spilled onto the carpet. The Remover stood and made his deliberate way into the office of the master of Hellebore House.

Lord Hellebore sat half in shadow, a ghostly presence. The Remover recognized his own habit when receiving his rather infrequent visitors; that part of the Remover's face which could still smile twitched a little as he sat down. The white flower in its spotlit vase glowed like phosphorus between them.

"Dramatic lighting, my lord."

Hellebore flicked his fingers and the light grew more even. "You will forgive me. I was thinking."

"A worthy occupation for a nobleman."

"And the worthier for being unfashionable, eh? So, do you bring me news?"

"Nothing you do not already know, my lord."

"Yes. Well."

A long time passed in silence.

"Explain to me," Hellebore said at last, "why you have failed."

The Remover's tone was mild. "I have not failed, my lord. I simply have not succeeded yet. Remember, you wished me to begin this while the person in question was still in the other world. When he escaped the initial attempt and crossed over, he gained days. But the pursuer has crossed over now, too. I think your quarry's hours of freedom are numbered." The Remover allowed himself another little smile-like tightening of the mouth. "I gather you have made an attempt of your own, my lord. I am surprised that after you spent so much to purchase my services you are willing to spend still more on what I must honestly suggest are less likely methods. Really, my lord — hollow-men?"

"The cave trolls are not such bunglers as you make out. And what is the purpose of being rich if you cannot employ multiple weapons against that which stands in your way? I would rather be paying a second assassin to stab the corpse than have an enemy slip away."

"But the task here is more delicate than a murder, my lord. That is why you hired me in the first place. Do you know the expression about cooks and broth? Would you choose to have several chirurgeons wrestling each other for pride of place while you lay ill on an operating table, or would you rather have only one, the best man at the craft, standing over you?"

Hellebore made a quiet noise of irritation. "When you have brought me this mortal, then you can gloat. If you succeed, I will make you official tame monstrosity to the Parliament of Blooms."

After an almost invisible flinch, the Remover said quietly, "But I am not tame, my lord."

"Enough of this." Hellebore stood, unfolding gracefully from behind the desk like an exquisitely crafted machine. "I have another with whom I would consult — I think you know who I mean. I would like you to come, too. You have not actually met him, have you?"

"Just the once, my lord."

"Ah, of course. I had forgotten." Hellebore waved his hand and a door opened in the side of the office. "You don't object to meeting him again, then?"

"On the contrary, my lord, I will find it most interesting."

They had been walking for only a few minutes, but already the temperature was noticeably warmer. "He likes his rooms heated," said Hellebore. "That won't cause any problems for your… condition, will it?"

"Only minor inconvenience."

"Lady Hellebore calls this part of the tower 'the Hothouse.' "

"And how is your wife?"

Hellebore gave him a strange look. The Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles was not generally known for making polite small talk. "She is well. She spends little time in the City these days, though. She has taken the younger children out to Festival Hill, our place in Birch. She is afraid there will be a war."

"But of course there will be a war. You are seeing to that."

"That is why I have not talked her out of staying at Festival Hill."

They reached another waiting room. Seated at the desk in this one was not a secretary but a man in a white cloak with a single band of white silk knotted about his dark hair. He looked up at their approach, then rose. "Ah, Lord Hellebore." His eyes slid to Hellebore's guest, stopped for a moment, then rapidly returned to his patron. "Have you come to see him?"

"Yes, but I'd like to hear any news, first."

"He is well — quite healthy. His appetite is uneven, but that is common in a child his age — some days nothing, other days we are calling down to the comb over and over." He looked worriedly for a moment at the Remover, clearly hesitating.

"Go on," said Hellebore.

"He had another seizure a few weeks ago, but otherwise has responded well to the medicaments. Interestingly, though, he is a bit allergic to both moly and the most quotidian sleep-charms…"

"Yes," said Hellebore. "Thank you, Doctor… Doctor…"

"Iris. Well, weft-Iris. But how could you be expected to remember, my lord? You have so many important things on your mind."

"Open the door, please."

"Of course!" Doctor weft-Iris sprang back to the desk and waved his hand above it, murmured something. A door appeared in the wall where there had been no sign of it before. Lord Hellebore stepped toward it, then paused and gestured for his guest to go in first.

As he did, he heard the doctor quietly ask Hellebore, "Is that… ?"

"Yes, it is." Then the door closed and Hellebore and the Remover were alone in a short, steam-dampened hallway. "You are a celebrity of sorts," Hellebore said with a cold smile.

"To the medical craft. And to a few other crafts as well."

When the door to the larger chamber opened, it was at first very hard to see anything through the swirl of warm fog. When the air currents caused by the door had abated a little, the huddle of white-clad bodies on the far side of the white room became clearer.

The two nurses stepped to the side as Hellebore approached, so quickly it almost seemed they must be guilty of something, clutching the towels they had been employing to the bosoms of their uniforms, their faces heavy with the look of foreboding common to the staff of that household. But their master apparently was in no mood to find a reason to punish anyone today. He simply waved them off, and, gratefully, they went.

"Hello, Stepfather," said the small figure in the thick white bathrobe. The boy's voice had a strange throatiness, as though it came from a full-grown woman imitating a child's way of speaking. The skin visible on his bare feet, hands, and slightly round face was quite pink, perhaps with the heat of the bath he had just left. His curly light brown hair fell in loose, wet ringlets to just above his eyes. "You can come forward — I'm really quite clean."

"So I see," said Hellebore, but did not move. "I came to talk to you. I've brought someone. This is…"

"I know who it is," the boy said with a grin. Even the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles, no stranger to disturbing sights, could not help noticing that the child's smile went his stepfather's grimaces one better: it did not touch his eyes or warm the rest of his face in any way, a grin like someone pulling up the corners of a corpse's mouth. "We're old friends, he and I."

"Ah. Yes. In any case, I wanted to ask you a few questions. Get your advice about something."

"About Theo Vilmos."

It was surprising in itself to see Hellebore surprised. "Yes."

"He's still free."

"How did you know?"

"Oh, come, Stepfather, that doesn't require any great art. What else would bring the two of you here? Your esteemed guest scarcely ever leaves his house in the waterfront district. And if you had managed to get your hands on this Vilmos, this… mortal," he gave the word an unusual, even poisonous emphasis, "then why would you be asking me for advice?" The boy stretched, then beckoned to one of the nurses. She came, shamefacedly sneaking glances at Lord Hellebore to see if he objected. The boy shrugged off his robe and stood, rosily and plumply naked. "Dry me. I wish to be dressed now."

As the nurse began to rub him with a towel, Lord Hellebore sent one of the other nurses for chairs. He sat, stretching out his long legs. "Well, then. Tell me why we have not succeeded."

"Because this is not a runaway servant or a spy from one of the other Houses you seek. Success will not come so easily."

"Are you suggesting that somehow this creature is outwitting us?"

Where another child might have rolled his eyes or snorted, the boy only became more still. Even as his outside was being briskly rubbed, he seemed to retreat into some quiet place within himself, barely within shouting distance. "No," he said at last. "I am saying that things like this — things of which this Vilmos person is a part — are never simple. He is an attractant of sorts, especially now that he is in our world, and so he will draw unexpected forces, cause unforeseen accidents, spawn unlikely coincidences. Look at the things that have happened around him already, consider the momentous events of which he has unwittingly been a part. Is a fish powerful? But throw one into a quiet pool where cranes and crocodiles are sleeping and things begin to change." The boy turned his exotic, brown-eyed stare on the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles. "You should know that."

"I do. But you put it nicely."

"Thank you. My stepfather has sacrificed much so that I might have a good education."

The Remover nodded. "Let's hope he has not sacrificed too much."

Silence fell. Hellebore did not break it, but rose and gestured. The other nurse came forward, her arms full of soft pale clothing, and the two servants began to dress the boy. "Come," the lord said to the Remover. "I have kept the car waiting for you."

"Give my love to Stepmother," said the boy, smiling again.

Hellebore grunted as if he were too distracted to reply. He did not look back, and did not speak again until he and his guest were out of the steamy room and moving down the corridor, the air cooling with every step.

"Everything that was ever written about creating a Terrible Child is true," said Hellebore thoughtfully. "He is an abomination."

The Remover nodded. "Then you got what you wanted, my lord, didn't you?"

18 SIDEWALKS OF NEW EREWHON

"You have to tell her, Theo. You know you have to."

He didn't want to do anything of the sort. He much preferred looking out the window at the nighttime streets. It was a place strange beyond all imagining, this city of muted bronze and jade and shiny black glass, even here on its outskirts with most of the sky-clawing towers still miles away.

Johnny Battistini had gone to Japan once as a replacement drummer for a metal band past its prime — "They made me wear a wig, Theo, no shit. I looked like Phyllis Diller!" — a one-shot gig that he had talked about for years afterward. At the time Theo had been frustrated by Johnny's inability to describe Tokyo and why it had made such an impression on him. Although he spoke about it frequently, summoning up the memory without warning from a haze of post-practice weed smoke, he could never explain his fascination more clearly than: "It was just… weird. It's like a regular city, but then it's all different and shit. But to them, it's not different. And that's the really weird part!"

I finally get where you were coming from, John-boy.

Theo felt a sharp, sharp pang of homesickness, as though a less substantial version of the knife that had killed Tansy's nephew had sliced him open and left him helpless against the strangeness of this new place. For the first time in his life, he truly missed Johnny B. The drummer would have reduced the whole of the experience to, "Wow, this place is crazy!" and by doing so made it palatable.

Other than the bizarre variety of creatures going about their lives just as though they were normal people in Theo's normal world, it was hard to say what about the City was so alien. The buildings, although a bit strange in shape and decoration compared to those back home, were still within the bounds of comprehension — no matter how gossamer-thin the walkways between buildings or shimmeringly translucent the stone facades, general engineering seemed at least similar to the mortal world: sprites and other fairies might fly, but the buildings largely resisted such notions. The nature of the City's artificial lights was different, of course, but he had seen that from a distance — he was just seeing it more closely now. The limousine had come out of a long stretch of darkened industrial warehouses on the outer rim of the City and was rolling through a lively network of streets lined with stores and theaters and clubs and restaurants, many decorated with stylized moons and apples, apparently for the harvest holiday, all with signs ablaze, but these arrangements of glowing tubes and bulbs had a spectral, twilight quality, as though even the fiercest, hottest spotlights were draped with shrouds of pale green and silver and gray. They weren't, of course: it was the light itself that was unusual, the otherworldly radiance of Faerie, a spectral glow beneath which mortals first lost their way and then lost their souls…

"Theo!" Applecore's whisper was so loud it hardly qualified as a whisper anymore; it felt like she'd stuck her head all the way into the hole of his ear. "You have to tell her."

"Why can't she just let us off somewhere near where this Foxglove guy lives… ?"

She shushed him with surprising force. It felt like she'd stuck a bicycle pump in his eustachian tube. Jesus, she sure has a loud voice for a tiny person, he thought, wincing. A friggin' six-inch-tall drill sergeant.

"We're not goin' anywhere near that shower!" she hissed. "I told you, I don't trust Foxglove. And don't mention any names, anyway!"

Theo shot a glance toward Poppy, who was sitting with her head tilted back against the seat, listening to the music with her eyes closed and a little smile on her face. She was holding Theo's hand quite tightly. "Okay, but why can't she drop us off near wherever it is we really are going?"

"Because the more she knows, the more dangerous it is for us — and for her, if for some reason you're suicidal and my life doesn't mean much to you. We don't want her able to tell anyone anything except she dropped us in the Deepshade District."

He started to raise an argument, but he knew Applecore was right. "So when do we get out?"

"Now. We can get a bus anywhere around here."

"A bus? My God, trains are weird enough. There are buses in Fairyland, too?"

"Shut it, you! Do you want to give yourself away completely? Now tell her. And don't go looking to me to fix it, or to make you look like a nice fella." She lifted off his shoulder and flew over to sit on the door handle at the far side of the car, fitting her back into the curve of the padded handle with her wings on either side. "Go on," she said loudly.

Poppy opened her eyes. "Sorry," she said. "This is just so much nicer than that old train. Father's factor will have a fit, of course — he's one of those old-school hobbanies who acts like every penny you spend is a hair plucked out of his own backside." She giggled. "My, Theo, you must think I'm a foulmouthed creature."

"Poppy…" Theo hated being a bad guy. He tried to think of a half-truth, but could not ignore the fierce attention of Applecore, watching him from the door handle with her arms folded across her chest. "Poppy, we can't go all the way into the middle of the City with you. You have to let us out here."

"What do you mean?" She looked from him to Applecore; the sprite shrugged. "Where are you going?"

"We… we have lots of places to go. You're in danger now just for knowing us, for helping us. We don't want to make it any worse."

"But… but I thought…" Her expression hardened. "You used me."

"No! No, Poppy, I swear…"

"You don't really care about me at all. You just acted that way so you could get a ride into the City. I should have let the constables take you away." In the dim light of the backseat, she seemed to have gone chalky white except for her staring eyes and the dark line of her mouth, which quivered. "You probably are murderers. No, that would at least mean you were really desperate. You're probably just thieves, just petty, nasty little thieves." She pounded on the partition that separated them from the driver. "Stop the coach!"

"Pardon, Mistress?" asked the doonie's disembodied voice.

"Stop the coach. These people are getting out."

The car pulled smoothly out of the slow traffic and over to the curb. The door swung open without a sound, Applecore still clinging to the handle. Outside, a sign advertising some kind of gambling parlor splashed shuddering blue-gray light all over the pavement.

"Look, Poppy, we're very grateful — I'm very grateful," Theo began, "— and I really do like you. I think you're…"

"You think I'm stupid. You think I'm a stupid child. Get out. Go to the Well, for all I care."

Applecore, ever the pragmatist, was already out and hovering above the sidewalk. A trio of husky young ogres slowed down to peer inside the limousine.

"Hello, seedling!" one of them said to Poppy, bending his immense form almost double to get his huge head into the open car door. He had fists like Virginia hams and he smelled like something sluiced out of factories in big pipes. "Looking for fun? Come down from the pollen palaces for a little of the gray stuff?"

"If you touch my coach," Poppy snarled at him, "— if you even breathe on the windows, I won't bother to have you killed, I'll have your family killed instead. Every one of them." The young ogre blinked at her. "Then you can explain to the neighbors that Mumsy and Daddy and your brothers and sisters are all dead because you were thinking with your knob when you should have been minding your own business. Now, consider the whole thing carefully before you decide, Gray Stuff — do you really want to fuck around with Thornapple House?"

The ogre had time only for one more dumbfounded blink, then his two companions grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away with a force that would have easily yanked a normal-sized person into pieces.

"Wow," Theo said as he watched them hurry away. "You're tough…"

"Get out of my coach!"

He turned. There were tears in her eyes, which made him feel like one of the lowest life-forms imaginable, but there was also something in her face that made him shut his mouth again without the protest of regret and innocence that was halfway up his throat and rising. Instead he turned and scrambled out onto the sidewalk. The door scraped his ankle as it slammed closed. A second later the limousine pulled back into traffic, which parted for it as though it were a dynamite wagon.

"You certainly can pick 'em," Applecore observed.

"Shut up." He didn't really want to alienate the sprite as well, his only friend, but he was too full of boiling misery to keep his mouth shut. It didn't matter, though: he couldn't think of anything else to say.

He followed Applecore down the sidewalk in a daze, trying to sort out his feelings, all but oblivious now to even the strangest surroundings and most unusual life-forms, glad only that the night skies were clear so he didn't have to add wading through puddles in a driving rain to his list of miseries.

The thing was, he felt bad because he hated being misunderstood, but there was more to it than that: he had genuinely liked Poppy Thornapple. In the midst of all that had happened, it had been lovely to have a few hours of nearly innocent flirtation, the cheerful companionship of an attractive young woman who also liked him. And there had been something about her, a what-the-hell quality, that he had found fascinating. "What did I do wrong?"

Applecore, who was doing her best to find the right sort of bus stop, ignored him until he asked again. "What do you mean, wrong?" she said.

"I didn't lie to her. I didn't promise her anything!"

Applecore shook her head. "We don't really have time to talk about this now, Vilmos. And you probably don't want to hear what I have to say, anyway."

"But I don't get it. I was really careful…"

The sprite dropped onto his shoulder, grabbed his earlobe, and leaned out in front of his face. "By the Trees, fella, have you ever actually had a girlfriend?"

"What the hell does that mean? Lots."

"Then you must have worked really hard not to learn anything about women. Is that why you had so many? Easier just to dump 'em when they started making sense?" She snorted and sat down on his shoulder.

Theo groaned. "My life sucked already, and now I'm getting lectured about my relationships by a fairy the size of a dog's chew toy. Perfect."

She didn't say anything for a long moment, didn't even move. When she spoke, even with her head so close to his ear, he could barely hear her over the noise of the traffic. "I'm going to give you one chance to apologize."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"What did I say? I'm sorry!" He was turning his head so sharply trying to make eye contact that he had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. A two-way procession out of an illustrated children's book eddied around him. "Applecore, please don't leave me. I said something stupid — okay, I'm sorry. But I don't even know what it was."

"Theo," she said after a pause, "almost everything you say is stupid."

"Probably," he said, relieved. Her voice had sounded almost normal again. "And you shouldn't pass up an opportunity to kick me when I'm down, anyway — you might not get another one for at least ten minutes. But I really don't know what I said."

"Do you think my size makes me stupid?"

"No!"

"And do you think I'm a woman?"

"Of course I do…" He swallowed down the "I guess," reasoning that it might muddy the situation.

"And the problem you're snivelin' about — would that be a problem with a woman?"

"Yeah, but…"

"So why would I not be qualified to give you the benefit of my experience, being as I'm a member of that particular sex?"

"Jeez, that wasn't what I meant. I just… Shit. Forget it. I'm wrong and so what else is new?"

"Quit whinging and start walking, ya thick. And listen a little bit."

"Okay, okay."

"What did you do wrong — isn't that what you asked? You said, 'But I didn't promise her anything!' as if how someone feels about you was some kind of court case or a contract, like you can solve it just by taking out the agreement and waving it around — 'See, I never said it!' But how people feel isn't like that, Theo, especially women. And the thing is, you know it, too."

He groaned again. "I don't know anything."

"Oh, yes, you do. I used to have a gentleman friend just like you. Sweet-tempered most of the time — he could be lovely, he could — but he just took everything that was given him and never wondered what was expected back."

"So what the hell is expected back, will you tell me that? Or are we men just supposed to read your minds?"

"By the Trees," she said, "it's like talking to a faun in the springtime. Look, fella, so you didn't tell her you loved her or that you were going to live with her in a cottage by the sea. Did you hold her hand? Did you listen while she talked about how happy she was? Did you or did you not tell her she was lovely and that you were glad you met her?"

"I thought you were sleeping! You were listening!"

"Fair play to you. This is my life, too, remember. Can you blame me for being curious about what stupid things you might tell the daughter of one of the people who are trying to kill us?"

He was walking again, all but oblivious to the grotesque and beautiful faces watching him through the windows of restaurants and bars, to the shouts and the foreign musical tones of the coach horns, even to the snatches of intriguingly exotic melody wafting out of stores. "Okay," he said at last. "You were listening. What was I supposed to say? She was nice."

"You're just like that other fella I went with. Theo, what do you lads expect? You make us work for every word out of you. Half the time if we let you have what you want, we never hear from you again, or if we do, you've gone all strange on us. We have to try to read you like a book in some language we don't know, then when we make a mistake, you tell us, 'Ha! I never said that! You can't prove it!' Look, you, you can't hold a girl's hand, cuddle up with her, tell her she's beautiful, then pretend that because you didn't ask for her hand in marriage it's all a mystery why she's upset when you piss off at the first opportunity."

Theo shook his head. "But you didn't even like her! You wanted me to stay away from her!"

"I like her better for not sitting around listening to your excuses. But you're right, I didn't want us mixed up with her at all. Which, you may have noticed, is why you didn't see me playing finger-tickle with her, or rubbing me leg on hers when I thought me companion was asleep. Turn right here."

"What?"

"Turn right here. There's a stop down this street for the bus through to the Morning Sky District."

The stop, an ornate bench beneath a small but equally ornate, leaf-shaped roof, stood in front of a boarded-up storefront. The sign over the store's front entrance had been pulled down, but in the silvery streetlights Theo could still see the bolts that had held the letters in place, spelling "Lily Pad Sundries" in that strange gibberish-but-he-could-read-it way that Fairyland writing usually appeared to him. There was only one other person waiting at the stop, a goblin sitting with a very straight back at the end of the bench. He did not look over when Theo sat down, but there was a change in the quality of his attention to the street that suggested he was not entirely oblivious.

"Okay, you win," Theo told Applecore. "You're the zen master of relationships and I'm the whatever, the uncarved block. Teach me."

She laughed sourly. "As if I need to add to my list of impossible jobs. Just use your brains, fella. I think you've got some."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Of a sort." She frowned. "If this is the right bus, we can stop at my place first before we go on to…" She stopped and shot a quick look over to the goblin, who was still solemnly watching the traffic slide past, his long nose pointed at the street like a finger. "To the other place."

Theo couldn't even remember where they were going — to see Foxglove? No, Applecore had vetoed that. "We're not going to go… wherever it is tonight, are we?"

"I don't know," she said. "It's getting a bit late. But I don't know where else you can stay."

"You said we were going to stop at your place. I'm not picky — I'd be happy to sleep on the floor or something."

She cocked her head, looking puzzled, but before she could answer the bus came around the corner, the engines humming with a sound like drowsy wasps, the brakes screeching a little as it pulled up at the stop. It was shaped a bit like a caterpillar, with accordion folds and a humped back, but still recognizably a bus.

I'm getting used to things here already, Theo thought as he went up the steps, then stopped when he got to the top. It wasn't the driver who gave him pause, a squat, donkey-eared woman half Theo's size on a special booster seat, with modified pedals in reach of her dangling feet. "Damn! I don't have any money," he whispered to Applecore.

"Doesn't cost anything," she said. "But that's a good thought. We need to get our hands on a bit of the yellow stuff pretty soon — I've pretty much emptied my tallybank."

The little goblin had got on ahead of them and had already made his way back to the rear of the bus. Since all the seats at the front were full, Theo followed, with Applecore on his shoulder. The passengers hardly looked up as he went past.

They wound up in a seat in the second-to-last row, beside a sleeping fairy woman with a faint lavender tint to her skin, who seemed a bit the worse for drink or something: she had an odd smell to her, almost like camphor. Her cheek was mottled with an old bruise and her wings were bedraggled, one of them even tattered along the edge. The goblin had taken a seat behind them in the last row, and was still staring ahead as though afraid to do anything else.

The bus had gone a few blocks when Theo realized he had been drifting, thinking of the look on Poppy Thornapple's face as she threw him out of the car and wondering why it hurt him so much to remember it. "About money," he said. "Why don't we just have Tan…" He paused: Theo was learning the trick of discretion, too. "Why don't we just ask your boss to wire us some. You can do that here, can't you?"

She frowned. "Not as simple as you think, but for reasons I don't want to talk about now. And I still have to puzzle out where we can put you up for the night."

"But…" He hesitated. "Listen, I don't want to cause trouble. I mean, if there's some religious reason or something that an unmarried sprite can't bring home a member of the opposite sex a hundred times her size…" He suddenly thought of something. "Wait, is this your parents' place? Is that why you don't want to bring me home? But I thought they lived back in…"

She stood up and touched his lip, silencing him before he could say more. "No, you great eejit. It's just that when I'm staying here in the City, I live in a comb."

He didn't get it. "And, so, what, do you have a hairbrush you keep as a weekend place? If you don't want me in your house, just say so."

Applecore rolled her eyes. "A comb! It's a place where people like me live. You don't think I rent something the size of what you'd live in, do you? What a waste! It's a special place just for sprites and us other wee folk, ya thick."

"Oh. Is that… comb like 'honeycomb'?"

"You get the prize, boyo."

"And I take it that it's not big enough for me to sleep on the floor."

"Theo, if you took the roof off you could just about wedge your head into the parlor, but you wouldn't have space left to wink. As for my room, well, I've got the biggest in our part of the place, and you couldn't probably spread your fingers on the floor without touching the walls."

"Our?"

"Me roommates. We're all in and out, but there's near a dozen of us altogether. That's just in our bit — the whole comb's got thousands." She looked out at the street. "We're almost there."

The thought of thousands of winged fairies in one place was faintly disturbing — like termite-hatching season. "Okay, I see why that wouldn't work. So what am I going to do? I sure don't have any money myself. Can I sleep in the park, or will the constables or whatever they're called come roust me out?"

"More likely you'd get eaten by werewolves." She didn't look like she was kidding. "Truly, you don't want to be in the park at night if you can help it. This is our stop."

As the bus shuddered to a halt and a few of the other passengers, gnomes and spriggans and various bogles squeezed their astonishingly disparate and in some cases quite awkward shapes out of the seats and into the aisle, a furred hand suddenly appeared beside Theo's head holding something small and vaguely white. He turned to see the goblin who had shared the bus stop with them leaning forward.

"Please forgive my too-sharp ears." The goblin smiled, showing sharp little teeth, and cleared his throat. "I had no intentions to destroy your privacy, but I could not help hearing something of your dilemma. If you should find yourself without a roof in this the very large and not excessively friendly city, come to this place. My friends and I share it. Not much, it is not much, but it is safe." He nodded emphatically. "Safe."

"Time to go," Applecore said, hovering noisily by Theo's ear.

"Thank you." Theo took the paper and stared at it for a moment, then closed his fingers around it. "That's very kind."

"We all wait on the hilltop." The goblin nodded his head again, just once this time — it almost looked like a benediction. "And we all wait for the wind to change."

Still trying to make sense of the last two remarks, Theo followed Applecore down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. "What was that about?"

"Who knows? Some kind of cult — goblins go for all that shower."

Theo stared at the slip of paper. The goblin had written on it in a surprisingly neat hand, "Beneath the old Fayfort Bridge." He showed it to Applecore.

"Not your high-rent cult, then," was all she said.

He was about to crumple it and throw it away when he remembered where and what he was: in a strange city in an unfamiliar land, penniless and homeless. Can't afford to throw anything away, he thought. I might need to leave a note for someone and not have any paper. A suicide note, maybe… He folded it instead and put it into the inner pocket of his shirt.

"Here we are," she said as they turned another corner. "Orchard Flower Comb."

His first impression was not what he had earlier thought it might be, a termite nest, but of a vertical meadow full of fireflies: the air in the small side street was absolutely ablaze with flickering, swooping lights — gray-green, pink, yellow, and pale blue, like a blizzard of radioactive snow. Some of the glowing shapes stood on the banks of tiny balconies that stretched the length of the street, but most of the gleaming spots were actually flying in or out of the hundreds of doors.

"What are all those lights?"

"Sprites," Applecore said. "A few pixies and hinky-punks and hob-lanterns, too, but all the flying ones are sprites. Why, what did you think?"

"But… you don't glow in the dark."

"Can't be bothered. Come along, you." She tugged at his ear, then flew on ahead of him.

Theo took a breath and followed. Bright shapes shot past him with every step, and although many of them were indeed tiny little people as human-looking as Applecore, the phenomenon felt more like walking through tracer-fire: for every self-illuminated winged figure, at least a half dozen that were unlit whizzed past him in the evening darkness, making themselves known only by the wind of their passing, an occasional wing brush through his hair, or in a few cases, a small voice shouting something that he could not make out. In fact, now that the rumble of traffic from the larger streets was behind him, he could hear high-pitched chatter all around — laughing, shouting, gossiping from balcony to balcony as the residents hung clothes or just enjoyed the evening. The firefly-colony metaphor was beginning to fail; with its rush of wings and the background of barely audible voices, the alley that contained Orchard Flower Comb was beginning to seem more like a cavern inhabited by talking bats.

The housing complex extended all the way along a wall that Theo only realized after some moments was the back of another, full-size building. The comb started at about the level of his knees and extended several yards up above his head, something between a high-rise tenement and a dovecote, row after row of box-shaped buildings joined side to side so that it looked almost like someone had mounted an immense set of wooden post office boxes on the wall and cut little birdhouse doors in each one. Most of the dwellings had balconies added onto them, although some of these seemed little more than fruit baskets fastened just below the doorway.

Theo's first impression of something as swarming and impersonal as an insect nest did not last long: the residents had clearly worked hard to put their individual stamp on their homes. Many of the fruit-basket terraces had potted flowers, hanging tinsel or streamers of cloth and other decorations, and most of the tiny houses had windows cut into the front walls as well, with curtains or blinds which colored the light that shone inside so that the pastel flickerings generated by many of the residents were matched by the more static colors of the windows. Some of the dwellings had been modified even farther, perhaps by a single family which had bought anywhere from two to a half dozen of the boxy apartments and then connected them in a number of clever ways, with exterior stairways and sliding poles. A few, to the secret delight of Theo's inner child, were scaffolded by a complex arrangements of chutes and ladders.

Not all the ladders led from one dwelling to another. Long accordions of steps hung down to the ground from most of the buildings, and looked as though they might be meant to be pulled up in an emergency.

"What are those long ladders for?" Theo asked.

"Pixies don't fly," Applecore said. "Now, you, wait here. I'll be back in just a wee while." She rose a yard or so above his head and then flew into a lighted door he could just barely see. A few small shapes poked their heads over adjacent balconies to look at him but didn't appear overwhelmingly interested.

The sprite didn't hurry back out. As he loitered in front of Orchard Flower Comb, Theo found himself wondering for the first time what it was like to be Applecore — how he would feel if he had grown up in a world of giants who were, proportionately, as tall as ancient redwoods. He couldn't quite wrap his head around it.

Somebody from my world who knows something, a college professor or somebody, ought to come here and study this place. No, researchers, a whole bunch of them. Because you could live here for years, I'll bet, and only just start to get a handle on how different it is…

"Ooh, he is a big one," someone said above him. For a moment, the pseudo-Hibernian dialect made him think it was Applecore poking fun at him, but the voice wasn't quite right.

"Well, of course he is," said someone else. "She told us he was a big one."

"I meant he's a big one for a big one," protested the first. "He's got shoulders!"

"Will the two of you quit it, you silly starlings?" said a third unfamiliar voice. "I'm getting me headache back."

Theo squinted upward. On a balcony just above his head a trio of Applecore-sized figures stared down at him. All three were young women, as far as he could tell, two with dark hair, one cut short, the other long, and the last with an immense fluffy mane of gold half-rolled in curlers. All three had wings poking out of the back of their housedresses.

"Are you Theo?" asked the blonde. "You're a big one, aren't you?"

"Can you think of nothing else to say, Ginnie?" snapped the one with short dark hair. "You're doing my head in." She looked down. "Pay no attention to this lot. They've only been in from the country about two hours."

"Ooh, Pit, it's terrible you are!" said the other brunette. "She's been here about a month longer than us and she puts on such airs!"

"Ummm…" He tried to let his brain catch up. "Are you… are you some of Applecore's roommates?"

"Yes," said the long-haired brunette, "although for as much as Core comes around these days, you'd think we were sharing the place with a will-o'-the-wisp." She made a little mock-curtsey. "I'm Fuzz. The one with the sour face is my sister, Pit."

"Fuzz… Pit…" Theo nodded, still struggling.

"We're Peaches. And that one with her hair all sticking out like Peg Powler is Ginnie."

"Don't tell him that! That's just a nickname," the blonde said, and sniffed at her roommate. "It's really Auberginnie. I'm an actress and that's my stage name."

"Yeah, back home in Hawthorn she was just another Eggplant," said Pit.

"Oh!" said Ginnie. "You're so stroppy tonight!"

"Well, me head hurts, doesn't it?"

Theo cautiously raised his hand. So far he had not been endearing himself to the female population of Faerie, and at the moment he was outnumbered three to one. He had a feeling that the size differential wouldn't make any more difference than it had with the power balance between Applecore and himself. "Hello. Nice to… nice to meet you. Yeah, I'm Theo. Is she… um… almost ready? She didn't tell me how long she'd be."

"She's faster to get ready than most." Fuzz leaned over the balcony, squinting, her hair dangling. It looked to be almost as long as she was tall. "So, are you really a Daisy? You don't look much like a Daisy."

"What would you know?" demanded Pit. "When have you ever seen a Daisy?"

"I saw one on the news talking about some parliamentary thing. Don't be such a gull."

"Saw one on the news." Pit shook her head. "Just ignore them both. They only came out to ogle you."

"What?" said Fuzz. "Are you saying it wasn't your idea? What a liar you are!"

"He'll think we're terrible," Ginnie wailed.

"See what I mean?" said Pit with grim satisfaction. "Farm girls. Fresh out of the branches. Still have pollen in their ears."

"Take that back!" Fuzz demanded.

Fortunately, just as Theo was seriously contemplating making a run for it, Applecore appeared beside them with a small suitcase in her hand. She lifted off the balcony and began to descend toward Theo, then flew back up and hugged her roommates.

"Where are you going?" asked Ginnie. "We've hardly even seen you!"

"Not certain," said Applecore. "I'll let you know. We just have some business to take care of… some Daisy business… and it's better we don't advertise ourselves."

"Does this have something to do with those fellas who were asking about you?" Fuzz wanted to know.

"What?" Applecore was clearly startled. "What fellas, when?"

"You mean you didn't tell her when she first came in?" said Pit. "What's wrong with you two?"

"You were in the next room, just watching the mirror-stream. You could have come in and told her…"

"Shut up, the lot of you!" shouted Applecore, and the heat of her response was so unexpected that her three roommates all fell silent. "Tell me what you're talking about. Now."

"A couple of pixies we haven't seen before came to the door," Pit explained briskly. "They said they were friends of yours from back in Great Rowan, but they seemed nervous."

"Shite and onions." Applecore shook her head. "I don't know any pixies from back there. What did you tell them?"

"That you were gone and we didn't know when you'd be back, what do you think?" Pit scowled. "I didn't like the look of 'em at all. Just as well I came home — these two probably would have had them in for tea and cakes and let them go through your room."

"That's not fair," said Ginnie, almost crying now. "And if you chased them away so well, then why did I see them just this morning? Sitting out on the front sidewalk, watching the comb?"

Pit glared at her. "You what?"

"Oh, Ginnie, why didn't you say anything?" demanded Fuzz.

"Because before I had a chance to remember, Core came back…"

"You had time to eat an entire sesame cookie by yourself before she got here…"

"Enough!" Applecore quickly gave her roommates another hug. "Don't fight, you three. And if those fellas come back, don't let them in. In fact, call the superintendent and tell him the pixies are harassing you. Talk about it on the terrace, get some other folk paying attention to them. Chances are they'll get tired of watching for me, but for all your sakes I want you to make it uncomfortable for them to hang about here." Her wings hummed and she rose off the balcony.

"But where are you going?" asked Fuzz. "This doesn't sound good at all."

"It's not, so it's better you don't know. Don't worry, dear ones, I'll be fine. I've got my big, strong friend Theo, after all." She settled on his shoulder, leaned into his ear. "Let's get going. The Trees alone know who's watchin' us right this moment."

Theo gave Applecore's roommates a distracted wave as he stepped out into the alley. "Go where?" he asked. "You never really told me."

"I've been thinking. Walk that way, back toward the bus stop, and try to look normal, will ya?" When she had him facing the right direction, she settled on his shoulder again. "Is that your best normal? Then I'm sorry for you, fella."

"What are we worrying about — pixies? Aren't they little like you? But wingless? How the hell are they going to follow me, anyway?"

"They can ride, y'know. Ratback. Birdback. And pixies may not have wings, but not all sprites are sweet and helpful like me, either, so let's keep moving and keep our eyes open. I think we're going to be okay if we stay out in the lighted areas. Even if they have poison arrows, they'd need a lot of 'em to knock you down and keep you from getting away."

"Poison arrows? What the hell are you talking about?"

"But that doesn't mean they won't do their best to follow us, find out where we're goin'. So we've got to scramble around on the buses a bit, then get to a safe spot."

"But not Foxglove's place, right?"

"No, definitely not. Hang on here a moment till I have a look." The bus stop was in sight. She lifted off his shoulder and buzzed away into the darkness. She was back hovering in front of him before he reached the empty bench. "Don't see any sign of anyone watching, but that doesn't mean much. A pair of pixies with the right charms…" She let it hang as though Theo would know about this sort of thing already. "As to where we're going… see, I'm not a Flower. Tansy and those other gentry types, they think they've got more in common with each other than with anyone else, so when times are bad he'd rather send you to someone in his own party. But Tansy's party, they're deal-makers, and like I said, I've already heard a few things I don't like about Foxglove. I'd rather take you to someone who's got something to lose — someone who can't make a deal because they're mortal enemies with the folks who are trying to kill you."

"You want to take me to the… the Creepers, right? The ones who wanted me in the first place."

"But not the Hollyhock clan. Tansy's right about that — who knows how Hellebore and Thornapple and that lot found out about that young fella coming to the commune to escort you — the one who wound up with his heart in a box? But they did, and in times like this it's usually an inside job."

He couldn't help smiling at the phrase. "You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell."

She scowled. "Call me that name again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe — from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?"

He shut his mouth.

"That's good, then. So we're not going to talk about this on the bus — if a goblin can hear us talking, so can a lot of other folk. We're going to get on and off the buses a couple of times, but in the long run," she moved in close and lowered her voice to a whisper, "we're heading for Daffodil House. There's someone there who'll want to meet you, and luckily it's someone who doesn't like Hellebore and his Chokeweeds very much."

If it had been something past ten at night by Theo's reckoning when they visited the comb, it was approaching midnight when they got off the last bus. Theo stood shivering on the sidewalk beside a wide thoroughfare — the night air had turned sharply cold — while Applecore sniffed the breeze. "I don't think we're being followed."

"Followed?" He looked around at the silent walls and dark windows. Actually, he realized, there weren't that many windows, at least at ground level. "There isn't anyone here at all."

"This part of Gloaming District's like that. No restaurants, no night life, just government buildings and some of the bigger house-towers. Once everyone's in for the night it's pretty quiet. Let's go."

She led him down a street full of tall buildings that, like everything else in this city of alien shapes and colors, were both like and unlike what he knew. Many of the Faerie office complexes were squat structures like old castles, with walls around the outside that hid all but the tops of the buildings within, and although they were covered with bright spotlights and had quite modern looking guard stations in the massive gates, they did not look much different from the medieval districts of his world that were still inhabited. Theo remembered seeing plenty of similar arrangements during his one trip to Europe with Cat: museum-quality stonework with spanking new technology bolted right onto ancient structures.

The family compounds — the "house-towers," as Applecore named them, were a bit different. For one thing, while the office buildings averaged five or six stories, the house-towers ranged anywhere from twice to ten times that amount. One of the first they passed, a huge structure lit by upward-slanting footlights which Applecore told him was Snapdragon House, was a good example of the type: it was not cylindrical but polyhedronal, and although it had regular rows of windows on the upper floors, there were none at all within fifty feet of the ground, probably for security: the only entrance to the building seemed to be through a gatehouse set well back from the street, its massive doorway set deep in a thick wall. But although there were few windows in the first hundred feet, the tower was not without decoration: the windows were a number of different sizes and shapes, and most of the available wall space was covered with ornamentation as complex as the gargoyles and carved saints of a Gothic cathedral. Even in the glare of the spotlights Theo couldn't quite make out the nature of the carvings, but they seemed to run across the side of the tower he could see in slanted bands, as though the whole thing created a single picture spiraling around the structure.

He asked Applecore about the decorations.

"Goblins gettin' killed, mostly," she explained. "Snapdragons made their names and their fortune in the last Goblin War. You should see Phlox House. They were big in the wars with the giants. They've got carved giant heads and shoulders built into the foundations — them big fellas look like they're not having a real good time holding up the building, either." Her voice took on a thoughtful tone. "At least I think they're carved."

She led him across a wide expanse of trimmed lawns and meandering paths, all quite empty in the pale, bluish light of the streetlamps. "Hoarfrost Park," she told him.

"Do we have to watch out for werewolves?" he asked nervously.

"I think they've just planted the new wolfbane — you see those hedges? They take better care of downtown then they do the parts where us working folk live."

Keeping his ears open for the sounds of something lupine in the shrubbery — because who knew what you could expect from disgruntled gardeners? Theo could just imagine them planting ivy instead of wolfbane by mistake — Theo slowed to look at a statue. It was the first he'd been close enough to see. It was of some strange, silvery metal, and seemed to represent a fairy lord in full armor, holding his swan-winged helmet in the crook of his elbow. He looked out across the park in a heroic pose that Theo had seen on dozens of statues back in his own world.

"Who's this?"

"How should I know?" Applecore flew in impatient circles. "The first Lord Rose, or maybe Speedwell, one of that shower. Come on."

Theo stared a moment longer at the sharp-featured face. If the subject of the statue was not one of the most arrogant creatures that ever breathed, the artist had done him a disservice.

"… Cold," said a weary, infinitely mournful voice. Theo jumped. "So… cold…"

He looked around, heart pounding. "My God! That statue just talked to me!" The voice had seemed miles away and yet right inside his head.

"No, it didn't." Applecore was beside him now. "Come along."

"It did! It talked to me! It said 'Cold!' "

"That wasn't the statue. See, when they cut down what was left of the forest that was here to make the park, the tree-nymphs… well, their trees were all destroyed. Some of them got into the statues as sort of a protest, but it didn't do any good. They're still in there." She shook her head. "Can't be nice for them."

"When did all this happen?" He was still shivering — the voice had sounded so lost, so miserable.

"Least fifty years, must have been, maybe a hundred. Nobody cared. It's sad, I suppose, but what can you do? Now hurry up."

He could not help looking back over his shoulder at the gleaming, silvery figure. Fifty years or more! He might only have fancied it, but he thought he could still hear a faint, miserable echo as he caught up to Applecore. "How can anyone put up with that? It's… it's horrible!"

"Nobody who lives around here stands next to 'em long enough to hear. You just learn. Anyway, here we are."

They looked down from the top of the grassy hill onto the edge of the park and a huge complex, the biggest he'd seen yet, perhaps four city blocks square, so wide that the whole of Hoarfrost Park was its front garden. The main tower was large, perhaps as much as thirty or forty stories high, but it was not the tallest he'd seen — the Snapdragon house-tower and a couple of others had been higher. However, three of the four corners of the complex also held towers that were each about half the main tower's height, so that the landscaped lot looked something like the gathering of Giza pyramids.

Like a cemetery full of monuments. The encounter with the dryad had upset Theo deeply — he could still hear its voice, the exhausted disbelief of an abandoned child.

"Daffodil House," Applecore announced. "Although really that's only the center tower-house. The other towers are Iris, Jonquil, Narcissus, and that low one's the conference center." The fourth corner, the only one without a tower, was filled by a sprawling complex of low buildings.

"Jeez," he said. "This is all one family's place? It's huge!"

"They're a big, powerful family," she said. "In fact, they've practically been bankrolling the Creepers all by themselves, so if it weren't for them…" She fell silent; Theo realized she had decided against finishing her sentence.

"If it weren't for them, what? Your kind might be busily wiping out my kind?"

"I'm tired, Theo. Let's just try to get off the street before someone catches up to us. Wouldn't you rather be inside those walls than outside just now?"

That was true. He had been out of Tansy's house less than twenty-four hours and felt like he had been on the run for weeks. He was exhausted, frightened, and had no doubt that he smelled pretty rank as well. One of those hollow-men could probably spot him from a mile away. "Okay, yeah. Let's go."

She led him to a tunnel barely higher than he was. It went all the way through a stone outer wall at least twenty feet thick. "The guard station's through here."

"Isn't this a bit of a weak spot in the defenses?"

"Have you ever seen a pastry bag?" Applecore asked. "You know, how you squeeze on it and this little stream of goo comes out the end?"

"Yeah?"

"Somebody in Daffodil House or in the guard tower says a word and these walls slide together." She made a squelching noise. "Whatever's in here — goo."

He thought very carefully about turning around and running back out again. "Is it a word someone might say by accident?"

"Hardly ever happens."

"Oh, I feel much better. How do you know so much?"

"Been here before."

The guard station, which was only the bottom floor of a large guard tower in the front wall, was an odd combination of medieval and modern: the interview room was mostly behind walls that seemed to be transparent glass or plastic. At this time of the night Theo and the sprite were the only people on the visitor side of the barrier, but that did not hasten the approach of the guards, a group of uniformed ogres who were playing some kind of card game on the far side of the room. At last one of them sauntered over and spoke to Applecore through a slot too small for even a sprite to get through, while Theo tried to look interested in the Daffodil — the Dynamic House! and Explore Historic Hawthorn Scathe brochures in a rack by the chairs. After a drearily long time the guard sauntered off, stopping on his way toward what looked like the communication center to kibitz on the card game.

"Aren't they going to figure out pretty quickly that I don't have the right identification — that I'm not really a Daisy?" Theo asked quietly when Applecore came back to him. He was almost too tired to be afraid. Almost, but not quite.

Applecore looked surprised. "Didn't Tansy give you anything?"

"No."

She shook her head, troubled. "Well, no matter. While we were at the comb I called the person we're going to see. Those Jimmy Squarefoots are just double-checking. If she's coming, it won't matter if you're wearing your pants on your head and dancing a jig."

They were kept waiting long enough that Applecore buzzed to the slotted window after a while for another exchange of ideas with the guards. The sprite's main idea seemed to be, "Get off your fat gray arse and call again." Theo did not really want to hear what the object of her disgust — a seven-and-a-half-footer almost as wide as he was tall, wearing something that looked very, very much like a wooden submachine gun on a shoulder strap (and with a dozen or more similarly sized and similarly armed friends ranged around the guardroom behind him) — might think about some of Applecore's more critical opinions, so he huddled on his chair by the brochure rack and tried to look as though he were just innocently waiting to get his work visa for Mother Goose Land stamped or something.

Even this tension couldn't last forever, and at last Theo found himself nodding. He was startled awake by Applecore hovering very close in front of his face, tugging cruelly on his eyebrow.

"Get up," she said.

"Stop it," he mumbled.

She leaned in close. "You don't know how lucky you are, boyo. Her ladyship came herself."

Theo opened his eyes wider and staggered to his feet. Standing just inside the barrier was a slender, handsome fairy woman, indistinguishable at first from any number he had seen in the train stations and on the streets. This one had light brown hair with an actual streak of gray in it, and although there was little else in her features or posture to suggest she was anything but in the bloom of young adulthood, he suspected he might be meeting one of his first older fairies.

"Marvelous," she said, looking Theo up and down. "Just marvelous. We are so lucky to have you." Her voice was deep and fell into the category he would have labeled "no-nonsense" back home — she sounded like the kind of aristocratic woman who would stick her arm up a pregnant horse without a moment's hesitation. "Just think," she said to Applecore. "An actual mortal!"

"She knows?" Theo was a little surprised.

"Of course I know. And I am really thrilled." She extended her hand. "Please forgive me — I am being a terrible hostess, but that's what happens when the thirst of inquiry is on me, I'm afraid. Welcome to our house. I am Lady Aemilia Jonquil. Lord Daffodil is my brother."

It took Theo a moment to realize that the hand he was shaking wore some kind of latex glove. Maybe she really had been helping a horse give birth, he thought. Or, more likely, a unicorn. "Nice to… meet you."

"Oh, and you, too, Master Vilmos. Now, I know this should really wait until tomorrow when we can get the testing under way properly, but before we put you to bed I'd like to perform just one or two small — and, I'm afraid, a bit more than moderately painful — experiments on you."

With Applecore hovering just out of range and ignoring Theo's increasingly nervous questions, Lady Jonquil took him by the hand and led him through the guard tower into the stony fastness of Daffodil House.

19 A HOLIDAY VISIT

The wind had changed and that morning had shifted into the northeast, a stiff breeze from Ys that moaned through the bending treetops of True Arden, a wind with a bite to it, first messenger of still-distant winter. It was the day before Mabon, and many of the staff would be traveling home for the holiday to visit family out in the countryside whom they had not seen in months. The younger employees, including some who could not afford the trip back home, were making the great house festive with corn dolls and acorn mazes and piles of apples on the tabletops. One of the caretakers had made a wine moon out of wicker and birch bark and hung it above the front door where it jiggled in the freshening wind.

It was an exciting day at Zinnia Manor, and not just because of the holiday, or the weather change, or any of the more usual reasons — sympathetic madness among the clinic-hobs nearing retirement, or an escape by one of the Feverfew twins (each time they immediately went to ground in the hilly countryside that surrounded the manor; sometimes the director had to hire a Black Dog and handler to track down the shapeshifting escapee). Instead, what was causing excitement among the nurses as they passed each other in the old halls or huddled over tea and lavender-oil muffins in the break room was the knowledge that the patient they called the Silent Primrose Maiden was going to have one of her rare visitors. The fact that it was almost always the same visitor, and that he came most holidays, did not make him any the less interesting to the manor staff. Not only was Erephine Primrose's visitor handsome even by the high standards of his folk, and also the heir-apparent to one of the most powerful family houses, he was known to be unattached. Dynastic pressures were strong, and he was said to have fathered a child or two on the weft side, but that did not mean he would never marry. And, as one of the youngest nurses pointed out, there was no law in Faerie that said he could not marry a commoner if he fell in love with one.

The older nurses laughed at this — the youngster who had spoken of the Primrose lordling as though he lived in the same world she did was a farm girl still damp behind the ears with the dews of Ivy Round, one who followed the romance fables available through Zinnia Manor's mirror-stream with the same deeply absorbed belief that other fairy-folk reserved for news about the latest debate in the Parliament of Blooms or announcements about interfield trade statistics or distant border skirmishes between the giants and the smaller but more ambitious mountain trolls. Still, all but the most hardened of her coworkers found something naively charming in the young nurse's insistence that even her large and pretty wings were no barrier to an alliance with a scion of one of the Flower houses.

"It's not as if I couldn't do something about that," she protested. "People are having their wings off all the time."

"Even more than once, some of them," another nurse pointed out. "Like Mr. Lungwort. His just keep growing back no matter how many times he has 'em pruned." The others laughed. The sanitarium's administrator was not particularly popular and his ambitions were the subject of frequent discussion.

"If you're lonely, what you really want is a mortal," said one of the older nurses. "Smelly and hairy and savage. Ooh, that'd do me right. I've not had any of that for centuries."

"Getting one of them's no more likely than getting a fellow out of one of the Six Houses — not these days," said another.

" 'Sides, if that Primrose lad even looked at you too long, I imagine there would be more than a few ladies from the High Houses who'd be happy to set a Stroke Boy on you," the older nurse said cheerfully. "That happened to a girl I know who was in service. They don't like to share with our sort."

"Look," the farm lass said, blushing. "I know it's not going to happen, but a girl can dream, can't she?"

At least they could all agree on that. And the Silent Primrose Maiden's brother, most of them also agreed, was someone worth daydreaming about.

"Erephine?" he said, as though he might be interrupting her at something. She sat in her chair, still and warmthless as a statue. "Good Mabon Eve, dear one. It's me, Caradenus. I came to see you."

He closed the door behind him and checked to make sure it latched. There had seemed to be an unusual number of nurses in the corridor as he had made his way to his sister's room, all doing their best not to watch him too obviously but not entirely succeeding. It was difficult to believe they all had business in the same part of the manor at the same time. Lately he found himself swimming in strange political currents; he wondered if the staff might be spying on him. But who would go to such an extreme? The Excisors? They must have larger matters to worry about than the duty that brought him to Zinnia Manor. His own father? Surely the two of them hadn't moved so far apart, for all their differences. No, he could make no sense of it. Perhaps it was only his imagination. Still, the staff had all seemed so… interested.

"I've come to see you for a reason." He reached out and took his sister's cold hand. "I'm involved in some things that might make it hard for me to come see you for a while." He moved a little closer, lowered his voice, for all the world as though he were sharing a secret with someone who could understand it. "Things are… difficult all over just now, especially in the City. There's talk of another Flower War." He closed his eyes, suddenly feeling very weary. "I fear it may be true. What a horror that would be, after all these years of peace."

He let go of her hand and sat back, examining her face. She continued looking at nothing. He made himself smile, but it was difficult. "Do you remember when we were both young and we went to go see our cousins at Pimpernel Rise in Alder Head, that big house in the hills? You were afraid because someone told you there were manticores in that wood, and I said I would protect you, that I wasn't afraid of anything." He shook his head. "I was only a boy, with my first sword and a few charms I'd learned. I promised you I wouldn't let anything happen to you. Ever. I promised."

For a long moment he could not speak.

"The old goblin," he said at last. "It's just come back to me. Do you remember him? We met him on the Bonfire Road. He was riding to market with some rabbit skins and he let you pet his unicorn." He summoned back the smile. "You were so brave! It had bells around its neck and it shied at the smell of me, or perhaps at one of the charms I was wearing. The bells all jingled. But it lowered its head so you could stroke it. How big your eyes were!"

He took her hand again and they sat in silence for a long time.

"I will come back to see you as soon as I can," he said as he stood up. "I do not forget. I will not forget." He bent and kissed a cheek like clay. "And if the day ever comes, I will see you avenged for this. I have sworn it by the Well." He hesitated, then bent and kissed her again, his eyes blinking. "I love you, my Erephine, my sister." She still had not moved except for the small expansions and contractions of her chest. "Farewell."

"He is fine to look at, isn't he? But he seemed sad when he went out," the young nurse from the farm country said. "Didn't you think so?"

"You can't tell with those Flower-folk," one of the others said. "Stiff as statues, they are."

"But maybe he's unhappy about his sister…"

Her coworker shook her head and went on measuring out the bite-me-not elixir into small cups: it was medicine time in the Active wing. "They don't waste their strength on feelings, those Flower lords, and especially not about the girl children of the families. They do what's right so that everyone can see it, of course. Very big on making the right show."

"Besides," said one of the older women, "She's been in here for years, so they must all be used to it by now. No, you're just being a romantic, my girl. It's easy to do with these rich, fair-faced chaps — they can seem however they want."

"Do you really think so?"

"Mark my words, girl, and don't let yourself be fooled. They rule the world, that lot. All of Faerie bends the knee to them. What would one of them have to be sad about?"

20 AMONG THE CREEPERS

"What the hell is that?" Theo squinted at the jar Lady Aemilia was holding, which glowed a pale yellowish green like something out of a low-budget movie.

"Don't be such a big girl's blouse," said Applecore, kicking her legs on the edge of the dispensary table.

"And what's that bizarre expression supposed to mean?"

"It shouldn't hurt at all," said the fairy noblewoman, but Theo felt she could have put a bit more feeling into the assurance.

"You said the last thing would only smart a bit and then it felt like someone stuck a dental drill in my spinal column. So 'shouldn't hurt at all' means what? No worse than a severe beating?"

"Certainly no worse than that," Lady Aemilia agreed. "Just lie on your stomach. Aren't we glad we didn't put our shirt back on?"

"Oh, yeah, we're thrilled." Theo clambered back onto the medical table and its white linen cover. He couldn't escape the feeling that this sparsely decorated room was actually a veterinary surgery, but he supposed he should be grateful that at least it was clean. Still, this was not the bargain he would have preferred to make — painful experimentation in return for sanctuary. "You still haven't told me what's in that jar."

"A leech, of course. We need some of your blood."

Theo was halfway off the table before Lady Aemilia grabbed his arm, but he got no farther. She was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like a willowy hundred and ten pounds at the most. "Don't make such a scene, young fellow." She turned to Applecore. "Does he really know so little about science?"

"Science — you're calling leeches 'science'? What do you call thumbscrews and the rack — 'probation'?"

"We simply need some of your blood so we can determine how… so we can do some other important testing. We so rarely get the chance to study someone like you."

"I thought this city used to be full of visiting mortals."

"Oh. Well, not… full, exactly. In any case, it has been a long while since we have had anyone of your type here, and our science has moved forward rapidly since then. This is a priceless opportunity to increase knowledge. Now would you please stop being such a soppy boy and lie down."

"Her ladyship knows what she's doin', Theo," said Applecore.

Theo didn't want to embarrass the sprite, but then again, it wasn't like she'd consulted him before getting him into this, either. He stretched himself facedown on the table and stared at the wall, which except for a stylized daffodil in bas-relief was as tastefully blank as the rest of the room's walls. He tried to relax, but when Lady Aemilia's cool hand suddenly touched his back muscles he barely stifled a shriek of alarm.

"Silly. Tensing up will only make it worse. Don't worry, these leeches are specially bred in the most scientific surroundings." Something was set gently on his back below one shoulder blade and settled there with a small wet shrug; he tried not to think about it too much. It nipped him sharply, then he could feel numbness spreading. "It should be better now," his hostess explained. "They have anaesthetic saliva. 'Anaesthetic' means that it suppresses…"

"I know what it means." It was probably bad form to interrupt fairy women of high social standing, but right this moment he didn't give a shit. He was tired of being treated like Charlton Heston on the ape planet. "It's Greek for 'We just added another five hundred bucks to your hospital bill.' " The puzzled silence lasted several seconds. "That was a joke."

"Ah, of course," said Lady Aemilia. "Oops, I think this little fellow is full. Cumber! Could you bring in another leech, please."

"Another one? Why don't you just poke a hole in me and fill a bucket?"

"What a good idea!" She tightened her grip to keep him on the table. "That was also a joke, Master Vilmos."

After Lady Aemilia had disappeared — off to instruct little fairy children on the evils of chewing gum or something similar, Theo suspected — he pulled his shirt and pants back on. The noblewoman's assistant, a small male fairy with skin the color of butterscotch pudding and hair only a shade lighter had remained to straighten up the examining room.

"How long have I been in here? It feels like it's been all day."

"It's late afternoon," Applecore told him. "Are you hungry?"

"Oh, yeah. Nothing like having a huge glowing leech on your back to put a man in the mood for chow."

"Would you like to wash your hands before I clean the sink?" asked the assistant. Theo shook his head and the slender fellow went to work scrubbing the shiny bronze.

"You're a grump, Vilmos," observed Applecore.

"Why are they so interested? I mean, there must have been half a dozen people in here today, staring at me. Not that any of them bothered to talk to me. I felt like the Elephant Man or something."

"I can tell you," said the assistant. When Theo turned to look at him, he blushed a little, or seemed to — it was hard to tell with his skin color.

Applecore fluttered up from the table and buzzed over to Theo's shoulder, balancing on it carefully as he buttoned his shirt. "Yeah, why don't you? He never listens to me."

The fairy bobbed his head and smiled. He seemed shy, but not in the servile way Theo had encountered so often during his single day at Daffodil House: the goblin housemaids who would not meet his gaze, the wingless but still obviously lower-class functionaries who hurried to one side to let him pass. In fact, there was a gleam in this fairy's eyes as he spoke that Theo could not at first understand. "It's just… oh, I'm certain that coming from a magical world like yours, we must all seem very drab to you, Master Vilmos. But it's an honor to be part of these examinations. You cannot imagine how exciting it is." His cheeks grew a little more brown; he was definitely flushed, now. "Speaking for myself. I mean, I'm certain Lady Aemilia is quite interested too, of course she is. But for me, it's…" He took a breath. "I earned my graduate degree in Mortal Studies. So this is… I never even hoped…"

Theo could not help liking this fellow. There was something pleasingly childlike about him, and not just his ageless features, or the fact that the top of his head only reached Theo's shoulder. "Well, I can't say I'm happy to be of service — not quite — but I suppose I'm glad someone's getting something out of this. What's your name?"

The fairy seemed caught entirely by surprise. "My name?"

"Shit, did I say something wrong again? Do you come from some fairy-place where you're not allowed to have a name until you've turned at least one pumpkin into a coach or something?" Theo regretted his sarcasm — the fellow looked confused and almost on the verge of panic. "Never mind. Is it all right to ask your name?"

Applecore snorted. "You see what it's like, running around with mortals? Put that in your next lab report, fella. I could tell you stories…"

"No, I just…" The assistant shook his head. "My name is Cumber. Cumber Sedge."

"Pleased to meet you." Theo began tying his shoes. "Now where am I supposed to eat? They brought some little seedcakes this morning, but I haven't had a bite since." He turned to Applecore. "They put you in some other part of the complex. Have you got a cafeteria over there or something?"

"I'm staying in Daffodil Comb under the main tower," she said. "I think you'd find the portions a bit small. But we should be able to get you set up in the refectory, or maybe they'd even bring something to your room, although it's usually only the high muckety-mucks that get that kind of treatment. Speaking of your room, did they do right by you? I didn't get much of a chance to look it over this morning."

"It's fine — kind of like the Wonderland Holiday Inn, but no complaints. I'm afraid to touch any of the appliances, though — I almost set Tansy's place on fire when I was there."

Cumber Sedge straightened, the gleam back in his eyes. "You know Count Tansy?"

Theo hesitated and looked to Applecore, but she seemed unconcerned. "Yeah, sort of. I stayed with him for a couple of days."

"He has some fascinating ideas about etheric vapors, quite original. One of the few Flower lords who is more than simply a gentleman scientist." He looked around guiltily after uttering this bit of lése majesté. "Have you read his work on Circular and Triangular Utterances?"

"Uh, I'm afraid I've been a bit busy lately, but I'll be getting to it any time now." He winced as Applecore tweaked his ear. "Stop that. So, where can I get something to eat? Dinner, supper, whatever you call your evening meal?"

"Would…" That one word seemed to have bankrupted Sedge's courage; he plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his white tunic and swayed a little, then had to take a deep breath before trying again. "Would you like to go have a proper meal? After all, it's Mabon Eve. I could take you — both of you. It would be an honor. There is a small restaurant here in Daffodil House, near the park, that's very nice." He flushed again. "Or so I'm told."

Theo shrugged. "Sounds good. Applecore? Or have you got something hot and heavy going on back at the comb — a date with Tom Thumb, maybe?"

"You're vulgar even for a mortal, you are." She dropped from his shoulder and buzzed over closer to Sedge. "Do I have time to smarten meself up a little?"

"Cer… certainly. I have to finish cleaning up here, anyway."

"Am I just allowed to go off like this?" Theo asked. "I mean, don't these Daffodil people want to know where I am at all times or something?"

Applecore snorted. "These aren't the folks who asked for you in the first place, Vilmos — those were the Hollyhocks. I had to beg to bring you here to Daffodil House, but now you're safe. It's a good thing for you that Lady Aemilia is so interested in mortals."

"Yeah? Any interest that centers around the application of leeches I can do without." Still, he found himself vaguely disturbed that his hostess and the rest of the Daffodil nobles seemed so little concerned with his whereabouts. "Did you tell her ladyship that people were trying to kill me?"

"Oh, yes. It was one of the things that interested her." Applecore rose and hovered. "I'll go make meself beautiful, boys. Shouldn't take more than a few hours." She laughed as she turned and flew out.

Cumber Sedge watched the fast-disappearing glint of her wings. "She's… really nice. Are you… if you don't mind my asking… have you…" A hectic patch on each cheek darkened all the way to milk-chocolate. "Is she your girlfriend?"

It was better than a cafeteria, Theo had to admit. The Gatehouse was a small, pleasant restaurant at the base of the Daffodil House tower on the edge of what was more or less a moat, halfway across the complex from the real gatehouse in the outer wall. Bathed by the silvery gleams of concealed spotlights, the moat might have been the remains of something that once had been practical, but now instead of guardsmen or walls it surrounded thick banks of rushes, a few artfully pruned willows, and a good half-mile of paths with ornamental bridges and benches set out at intervals so that the most picturesque spots could be viewed in comfort. The food in this newer gatehouse was good, although Theo was not entirely in love with Fairyland cuisine, which relied a bit too much on honey, clotted cream, and flower petals for his tastes.

"So were these places here before there was a city?" Theo asked.

"Many of them, I suppose." Cumber Sedge was on his second glass of wine and was beginning to loosen up. He already had a splotch of mint jelly on his gray shirt. "I'm afraid I'm not very good with ancient history. The City is built out from the site of the first mound, you know — some even claim it began before there was a king and queen, but I don't believe them — so it's very, very old. Anyway, I'm pretty certain that the Daffodil family castle has been in the same place a long time, like the Hellebores and the Primroses. Apparently the established families like to build on the site of older buildings, or incorporate them."

"You say it like you've only heard about it. Aren't you one of them? A Daffodil?"

Applecore, sitting on a tiny chair and eating at a tiny table set on the tablecloth between Theo and Cumber, gave a little snort, then picked up her tiny bowl of dandelion wine and had another drink.

Cumber smiled apologetically. "She's laughing because I'm not a Daffodil — I'm not from one of the Flower Houses at all."

"That's not why I laughed," she said. "Some great eejit just fell in the moat outside." A few of the restaurant's other patrons were also staring out the picture windows at the commotion down by the water.

"Ah. That looks like Zirus and his friends. Zirus Jonquil — Lady Aemilia's son. He and his friends can be rather… sporty. We were at school together. Not that they ever took much notice of me."

"So you're from a different family?" Theo asked. His venison had been quite good, simple but well-cooked; now he was enjoying the wine and beginning to wonder if people in Faerie smoked cigarettes or even cigars, and how he might get hold of such a thing. "I was wondering why your name wasn't Titus or Taurus or Doofius or something like that."

"A different family?" Cumber let out a sort of shamed giggle. "A different species, almost. I'm a ferisher."

"A what?" Theo was distracted by a thump and jingle from the front door as several youthful-looking fairies pushed into the restaurant and up to the bar, talking and laughing loudly.

"Ferisher. You haven't heard of us? We're domestic fairies, mostly. My mother was one of Lady Aemilia's nurses." He looked sideways at Applecore. "She's been very kind to me, Lady Aemilia. When she found out how much I liked to read, she always gave me books. And she even sent me to school with her own boys. I was the first ferisher they ever had at Great Ring Academy…"

"Look who's here! It's old Cumberbumber!" A figure lurched up to their table, his appearance so loud and sudden that Theo flinched. "Well, Good Mabon Eve to you, Sedge. I can't believe my mother actually let you out of that dungeon of stinks where she keeps you locked up!"

"Hello, Zirus." Sedge's smile was a little nervous. "Good Mabon Eve to you, too. I like it in the lab. I like the work."

"Work — bloody Bark and Root, who wants to work? Had enough of that back in school." The tall young fairy yanked an empty chair away from another table, startling the table's occupants, and sat on it splay-legged and backward, tipping back and forth between Theo and Cumber. He was dark-haired, very handsome — the resemblance to his mother's chiseled features was easy to see — and seemed by the standards of his kind to be quite, quite drunk. "Who's your chum, Cumberbumber? Old family friend?"

"Yes, he's a friend," said Cumber, and gave Theo what looked very much like a warning look.

The young fairy lord offered Theo his hand and Theo took it, not quite sure of what he was supposed to do. He gave it a shake that turned into sort of a squeeze, then let go. If he had done anything wrong, the scion of Jonquil House appeared not to have noticed. "Pleasure to meet you, all that. Zirus Jonquil, me. Don't mind what those others over there tell you — they're all potted." He gestured at the bar, where several of his friends were standing a little unsteadily, although their natural grace was such that Theo was only now getting to the point where he could tell the difference between sober and unsober fairies. "You are?"

"Theodorus," he said. Applecore flitted up to his shoulder and whispered a suggestion in his ear. "Theodorus weft-Daisy."

"A country cousin!" said Zirus. "Welcome to the big, bad city. What do you think? Your first visit?" He turned to his friends. "There's a lad here fresh in from Rowan." He turned back to Theo and Cumber Sedge as his friends at the bar shouted what sounded like genial insults at the out-of-towner. "Say, what are you fellows doing tonight?"

"We're just having dinner…" Cumber began.

"No, you're coming with us — it's a holiday, isn't it? Bring your friend." Zirus squinted blearily just a bit to the side of Theo's face, and for a moment Theo thought the fairy lord was going to be sick. "Hoy, who's that? There's someone on your shoulder, Daisy."

"Her name is Applecore."

"I'm a friend of your mother's," the sprite said, a bit sternly.

"Ooh." Zirus grinned. "Then you'd better come along too, so she doesn't find out where we're going until it's all over."

"Go where?"

"The most wonderful club. Very new. Everyone's talking. And they will be until it closes in a week or so and they're talking about something else." Zirus chortled. "Come 'long. I insist. Haven't seen old Cumberbumber here for a shuck-dog's age." He grabbed Theo by the arm. He had his mother's grip, and Theo found himself pulled up onto his feet. "I insist. We'll go in my coach. The rest of this lot can find their own way." He tugged Theo toward the front of the restaurant with Applecore buzzing along beside their heads and Cumber Sedge hurrying along after.

"Don't we have to pay for our dinners… ?" Theo asked as they reached the door.

"Pay? Rubbish. Hoy, Needle! Put it on my bill!" The bent old fairy behind the counter didn't look pleased, but didn't say anything as they banged out the door and into the cold evening air. "He's probably a bit miffed because I haven't settled my tab in a few months," Zirus confided to Theo as he hurried them down a winding path toward the compound's front gate. "Mother is being dreadfully stingy about advances on my allowance. Hoy! I'll go wake up that lazy driver of mine. I can see him sleeping from here!"

As Zirus skipped off toward a long limousine that was idling in a little parking lot just beside the gate, Theo slowed down until Cumber Sedge caught up with him. "Do we have to do this?"

Cumber shrugged, embarrassed. "It's not a good idea to say no to Zirus. He's like his mother — curious about things. He'll just get even more interested in you and start asking questions, and not necessarily only around Daffodil House. I'm lucky — most of the time, he forgets I exist."

"Come on, you lot!" Zirus shouted.

"I don't like it," said Applecore quietly in Theo's ear. "But at least we're not likely to get picked up by the constables while we're out with him — nobody arrests a Flower."

"It's not being arrested I'm worrying about," whispered Theo, remembering Rufinus weft-Daisy slumped on the train station bench. But Zirus Jonquil was trotting back toward them in a not entirely straight line, waving his arms and urging them to hurry.

"Sorry, sorry, this is all my fault," said Cumber Sedge.

"By the way," Theo asked Applecore, "I understand the 'Daisy' part, but why do you keep telling people my name is 'weft-Daisy'? What does 'weft' mean?"

"Bastard," she said. "Don't look at me like that, ya thick — I'm just telling you what the word means."

Zirus Jonquil kept talking as they rode across town, a drunken but also highly entertaining recitation about silly people and unusual events that Theo felt sure he would find even more amusing if he knew any of the subjects or even a bit more about the world in which they all lived. A lot of the stories seemed to be about people getting into trouble in places they shouldn't be, off their own turf. To hear Zirus tell it, these shenanigans sounded a bit like the early parts of West Side Story, funny and more exciting than dangerous, but as Theo looked out the car window at some of the bleak, run-down neighborhoods they were now crossing, he thought the area itself looked like some of the less charming parts of Los Angeles, more like Bloods and Crips than Sharks and Jets.

"Where are we going, exactly?" he asked Cumber. "This club?"

"I'm not certain," said the researcher. "But it does seem a bit far — I think we're already at the far end of the Eventide District. Zirus, where are we going?"

"Just into Moonlight." Their host's tone was light, but Theo could tell by the uneasy look on Cumber's face that it was not such a minor thing.

"This isn't good, Theo," Applecore whispered in his ear. "Ask him what the name of the club is."

When Theo did, Zirus smiled and drained another glass of something he had poured himself from the bar built into the car door. "Oh, you probably haven't heard of it — it's only been open a couple of weeks. It's called Christmas and it's quite good." He laughed as Cumber Sedge flinched. "You really have to get out more, Cumberbumber. If the name of the place bothers you, wait until you see the decor!"

"Where exactly is this place, Zirus?" Cumber asked. "I didn't think there were any clubs in Moonlight, just house-towers and government buildings and places like that."

"Ah, but that's what makes this club so good," the young Jonquil lord said. "It's in the basement of Hellebore House."

A six-inch tall sprite had to gulp loudly to be heard so clearly. Theo's uneasy feeling suddenly grew a great deal more intense.

"Not good?" he whispered.

"Very not good," she whispered back.

"Oh, stop it, you two," said Zirus. "Everybody makes such a massive fuss about the Hellebores, just because the father's awful and political and the heir is a bit of a strange weed. But some of the younger ones are quite fun in a wild sort of way. Besides, how else would any of us from Daffodil ever get to see the inside of Hellebore House?"

"But I don't want to see the inside of Hellebore House." Cumber had clearly had more to drink than he usually did, and had become ever more silent and morose during the journey. "They're our enemies."

"Enemies!" Zirus shook his head in amused astonishment. "Do you believe all that nonsense about a Flower war? It will never happen. Bark and Root, they're always squabbling in Parliament. The goblins will rise up and execute us all before the houses go to war with each other. Speaking of, this part of Eventide really has gone to seed, hasn't it?" He frowned. Outside the window the streets were crowded again, but it did not seem like a happy scene. Most of the folk on the sidewalk were goblins and what looked to Theo's untutored eye like various kinds of doonies and squat boggarts and other not-quite-human-looking folk. They seemed listless and unfocused, standing or even sitting on the sidewalk in the harsh silvery light of the streetlamps, collected in little knots. Many of them looked sullenly at the car as it slid past them.

Theo remembered something from his great-uncle's book about the shape of the City being a sort of spiral. "So, Daffodil House is in Gloaming, right?" he asked Applecore. "And this is, what, Eventide? And we're going to Moonlight. So does it just keep going? I mean, does it get darker and darker? Is there a Middle-of-the-Night or something?"

"Let's not talk about it," she said.

"Why?"

"Because."

"No whispering, you two," said Zirus. "Blast, we're out of brandy." He settled back in the seat and crossed his legs. "What brings you to the City, Daisy?"

"He came with me," Applecore said quickly. "He'd never been and he wanted to do some sight-seeing."

"Sight-seeing?" Zirus groaned. "Don't let her drag you around to all that nonsense — Winter Dynasty Bridge, Knocker's Walk, all that. Stick with me, I'll show you the real City."

"That's very kind of you." Theo was wondering how quickly they would be able to shed this young Jonquil lord and get back to Daffodil House. He did not like the idea of being introduced around — what if they ran into someone who really was from Daisytown or whatever the damn place had been called? He could only pray that this would be one of those clubs where the music was so loud you couldn't do anything but nod and smile while people yelled unintelligible questions.

"Speaking of the real City," said Zirus, "We're just coming into Seven Blooms Square. You know all the old stories from the last war with the giants, I'm sure — Sweetpea's Charge, the Battle of the Twilight Bell, all that." Theo knew nothing of the sort, but nodded and tried to look intelligent. "Well, it's all rubbish, at least about the Seven Blooms, and I should know because we Daffodils were one of them. Well, it's not all rubbish, but the bit about the people all cheering when the Seven families announced they were going to create a new parliament, that certainly is. It was all done in secret, and only because they were all tired out from trying to kill each other after the giants were defeated. Nobody was cheering because the king and queen were dead and everyone was terrified. My great-uncle swears on all the Trees that old Otho Primrose was so frightened and shaking so badly that he couldn't have signed the treaty except Lord Violet was helping to hold up his arm."

Theo had no idea what any of it meant, although there were a few faint resonances with things he had read in his own great-uncle's book. He was having trouble thinking clearly and wished he hadn't had the wine. A light spatter of rain on the coach windows broke the strange, witchy lights of the city-center up into a smear of silver and green and blue spots, but it seemed to be getting darker outside rather than brighter, as though they were leaving the well-lit areas behind. In the middle of a long patch of blackness broken only by an occasional streetlamp, the coach slowed and stopped.

"What's going on?" Cumber Sedge didn't seem nervous, just confused, but then he probably didn't have as much to worry about as Theo did.

"Checkpoint," explained Zirus. Theo could vaguely make out a dark shape blocking the way, some kind of wall. Low voices spoke for a moment, their own driver no more intelligible than the guards or whatever they were, then the coach again moved forward, but more slowly this time.

"There it is," said Zirus. "Hellebore House. Mad bastards, the lot of 'em, but you have to admit the old place has style."

Theo couldn't make out much of anything until the young Daffodil lord flicked his fingers at the door and the window slid silently down, letting in a spatter of misty rain. After Theo blinked the water out of his eyes he saw the huge pale spike.

It was so strange an object that it took him a moment to get the perspective. If it had looked more like an office building or a castle tower it would have happened immediately, but it looked like nothing so much as a kind of ivory chess piece out of some abstract set — a very slender rook or a predatory queen. It was not cylindrical like the Daffodil towers, but four-sided, as far as Theo could tell, although neither of its visible sides were rectangles — not quite, although they looked like they might have started that way. The whole structure seemed to have been stretched out of true, as though a great hand had reached down, grabbed the tower by its spiky, many-gabled roof — an odd contrast with the simplicity of the rest of the building's lines — and yanked on it, pulling it up into the dark sky like a piece of bone-colored taffy. It was lit by carefully arranged spotlights, some with a reddish tint, and all its windows were black. It looked like the shell of an alien animal or a skull with hundreds of eye sockets.

"I… I don't like that place." There was more to Theo's aversion than he could express, an alien coldness that came down on him suddenly and with great weight. It reminded him queasily of something — a nightmare? — but he could not remember what it was. He only knew that he was having trouble getting his breath, and that he wished he were somewhere else.

"Why should you like it?" Applecore asked. "They're not nice people in there." Cumber Sedge only mumbled as he stared out the window — the ferisher, Theo realized, was pretty seriously drunk.

"Wait until you see the club," said Zirus, pouring himself another drink. "It's really interesting."

Theo had now heard the word "interesting" several times from Lady Aemilia and her son. He was beginning to suspect that it had two meanings for them, and neither of those matched the definition of the word as he had previously known it. One was "horrible." The other was "especially horrible for mortals."

"I don't think I want to see any more interesting things," he announced, but it was far, far too late. They were already in the driveway that led to the main gate. He felt as though something was waiting for him, something dreadful. He hoped it was only that he wasn't used to fairy liquor.

At first it seemed like it was going to be even worse than he had thought — the hulking ogres at the massive gate shining lights into the car, the long wait which Theo was convinced would end with them all being dragged out and handcuffed, or put into stocks, or whatever restraints they used on wanted criminals in Fairyland. Applecore had moved to his shoulder; he could feel her sitting there, a tensed, hard little object that seemed made of springs and knobs. He realized he'd never seen their driver, and had a sudden suspicion that the creature behind the wheel was one of the corpselike hollow-men, that this whole episode had been an elaborate trap. But instead the ogres stepped back and the limousine suddenly rolled forward again through a renewed flurry of rain that slapped against the windshield, then down a dark and disturbingly long tunnel that dumped them into an underground parking lot about five seconds before Theo's paranoia hit the critical point. In a daze, he followed Cumber Sedge, who didn't seem any more eager to go than he was: Zirus Jonquil almost had to push them both out of the car. As they walked across the echoing, silverlit garage, Theo looked back at the limousine but could not make out the driver's face through the darkened windows.

They could already feel the music as they waited for the elevator, a thumping, jarring sensation as though something extremely large was trying to escape from the floor below them. A few more fairy lordlings joined them, laughing and talking so fast and in such emphatic slang that Theo couldn't understand a word. He let himself be moved into the elevator like a puppet.

When the door opened the sound hit him like an explosion, a walloping bass and strange polyrhythms he couldn't quite wrap his head around, topped with a soaring wind instrument like a clarinet. Two huge gray hands patted him down in a rough but cursory fashion, then shoved him through into the noise and the flashing lights and the crowds of extravagantly dressed (although some were nearly naked) and almost uniformly gorgeous young fairies. Transparent shapes gyrated in midair among the dancers, shapes that looked like nothing so much as ghosts and which popped like soap bubbles when the dancers touched them. But nothing stunned him as much as realizing what the club actually was.

A church… ! He had been expecting something more in keeping with the name, some kind of mock-horror decadence with a Yuletide theme — serial-killer Santa maybe, mutilated elves, black tinsel and scorched trees. Instead he could have been in the chapel — albeit a large one — of an Episcopalian church. There were stained glass windows, lit from behind, and a simple altar near the far wall beneath a large crucifix, from which even the most frenetic of the dancing fairies in their extravagant finery seemed to keep a respectful distance. The Jesus on the cross was not even one of the more tormented, bloody sorts he had marveled at in Mexican churches during his traveling days. He was about to say something about it to Cumber Sedge — bellow something, since that was all that could be done — but the ferisher stumbled against him and almost fell.

"This… is… horrible," Cumber groaned.

"We have to get him out of here," Applecore shouted in Theo's ear.

"Is he drunk?"

"It's that." She pointed a tiny hand at the crucifix. "These people… they're all crazy. Sick."

And suddenly he remembered what she had told him about swearing, and realized that it was the Christian symbols themselves which gave this place its nasty cachet. They didn't need to have pictures of mangled children or evil toys: it wasn't the Christmas bit that was the draw here for Faerie's jaded gentry, it was the Christ bit — not modern Christmas, but Christ Mass.

"Where are you going?" Zirus shouted. He had already found a drink, somewhere. "This is fabulous, isn't it? They've actually hired Bishop Silver to do the music. All those great old music charms — everyone wants to get him. He's absolutely the most vaporous tunesmith in the city. Makes his own phantasms, too, you know."

Theo waved his hand in a distracted way. He guessed that the phantasms must be the transparent, faintly glowing figures flying around the dance floor. The music certainly was interesting — he could hear all kinds of strange fragmentary resonances, and could sense noises in it that he couldn't quite catch with his ears. He would have loved to learn more about it, but not here, not now. "Yeah, it's great," Theo roared back above the din.

"Can I get you something?"

"Cumber's not feeling very well." Theo struggled to keep the ferisher upright. He'd been in this position before, but it was the first time he'd ever had to carry someone out of a club because of too much Jesus. "Is there another room?"

Zirus laughed. "You're doing okay, though, country boy. A bit more than you seem, eh? Right, I think there's a quiet room just up the stairs. I'll catch up with you — I've just seen some friends."

The room was open to the dance floor, and the noise boiling up from below didn't make it a whole lot easier to talk, but at least they couldn't see the crucifix from the table in the dark room. Theo got Cumber sitting upright and Applecore fanned his face with her wings until he seemed a bit more himself.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Just… not my sort of thing."

"That's okay," Theo said. "Do you want some water?"

"No, another drink."

"Are you sure?"

The ferisher nodded his head grimly. "It'll make it easier. We'll be here a while."

"Well, why don't we just go home by ourselves? Catch a cab or something?"

"And how are we going to pay for it, boyo?" asked Applecore. "Do you have any tallies? No, I didn't think so. Cumber?"

The ferisher shook his head. "I paid for the meal in the restaurant. I left it on the table. It's one thing for Zirus to walk out on a bill, but I'm not the Jonquil heir." He sighed. "But that was all I had, so we'll have to wait for him to take us home. Could I have that drink? I'll be perfectly happy to put it on Zirus' tab."

"I'll go find a waitress," said Applecore, and hummed straight over the railing into the seething mass of creatures below.

Another group of fairies, apparently upper crust and dressed in a weird mixture of what looked to Theo like High Victorian and slashed and smeared punky Goth fashions, piled into the quiet room and settled around a table in the opposite corner, making it much less quiet. Theo frowned and moved a bit closer to Cumber Sedge. "I don't know how much you know about me," Theo said, "but I really don't want anyone to… well, notice me. There were people trying to kill us on our way to Daffodil House. I shouldn't even be here."

"Nor should I," said Cumber mournfully. "Don't belong."

"I'm just saying that I don't know enough to pass myself off as anything, really. So please, help me out. We can't afford to draw any attention. We just need to stay sort of quiet and unnoticed until your Jonquil friend takes us home again."

"Understood." Cumber tried to lay his finger alongside his nose in a gesture of secret solidarity and managed to poke himself in the eye. Applecore buzzed back in, followed a few moments later by a waitress, who took one look at Theo and Cumber Sedge and went to take orders at the other table first.

"How are you boys?" Applecore asked. "Enjoying this charming place?"

"I was just telling Cumber that we need to be… inconspicuous."

"No worries about that," the ferisher said. "Nobody here wants to see you. These Flower folk, they could care less. One of the lesser classes — even worse, one of the other races… !" He shook his head. "Wouldn't help you if you were lying dead in the street."

The waitress appeared, an attractive fairy woman with surprisingly prominent wings. She was wearing an odd costume that Theo only figured out after she had left — bearing their drinks order and instructed to charge it to the young laird of Jonquil House — was a nun's habit shortened and slit into a minidress.

"But Zirus seems like an okay guy," Theo said.

"Oh, as far as they go, he's a good one." Cumber had recovered from his initial shock, but had become morose and distant. "But most of them wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire."

"Unless you were lying on an expensive carpet," said Applecore.

"So are you telling me that no matter what language I spoke back in my world, I'd be speaking Fairy here?"

"You'd be speaking the Common Breath," Cumber said, working very hard to enunciate his consonants above the musical din. He'd had three drinks on Zirus' tab, and what he had gained in cheerfulness he had lost in articulation. "That's the language all the races of Shaerie fare. Bugger. Faerie share."

Applecore, who had downed a few thimblefuls herself, giggled. She had left Theo's shoulder and was sitting in the middle of the table.

"Okay, I guess I get that. But what if my normal language was, I don't know, Arabic? No, Chinese. Isn't it kind of weird that I'd arrive here and I'd see all you fairy folk from, like, old Irish stories and whatnot?"

"That is an interesting question," said Cumber, downing the last of his drink. "You see, Seeo, we don't thee… we don't see… ourselves the way you do. And we don't see you the way you see you. Right?"

"You've lost me."

"See, there have always been people of Faerie visiting the mortal world. Well, until recently — the Clover Effect has cut back on that." He frowned. "And until just lately, there have always been mortals who have crossed over into Faerie. So most of the difference between what some mortals call us and what some others call us is just the difference in mortal languages. You call us fairies, other mortals call us peris or whatever the Chinese word or the Balinese word is. See? But there is another difference, too. It was a ferisher who did the important work on it, actually." He nodded slowly. "Holdfast Buckram. A few centuries back. Wrote a marvelous book called The Mortal Lens. About how mortals tend to see what they want to see. No 'fense." He belched. " 'Scuse me."

Theo was trying to pay attention — this was something he hadn't read about in his great-uncle's story — but a fairy lordling at one of the other tables in the quiet room was smoking what looked very much like a cigarette in a long cigarette holder, and Theo found himself wishing he had the courage to go bum one. But that would be asking for trouble, wouldn't it? He tried to refocus on Cumber Sedge. "So I see most of these fairies as looking like… like the kind of fairies I expect to see?"

"More or less." Sedge got the attention of their waitress and ordered another round of drinks. Theo shook his head. He had been drinking only a sweet wine, and was only on his second glass since reaching the club, but he was already feeling more fuzzy than he wanted to. "So if you had grown up in some quite different datrition… bugger… tradition, you'd be seeing and hearing things a bit differently."

Theo had now stopped listening entirely. The young, pale-haired fairy with the cigarette holder had leaned back to laugh at something. Sitting on his far side was Poppy Thornapple. "Oh, my sweet Jesus," said Theo.

"That only hurt a little!" Cumber announced cheerfully.

"Vilmos, I told you, don't do that," said Applecore.

"There… over at that table, it's the girl we were on the train with." Poppy was dressed quite differently now, no longer wearing what he realized had been her meeting-her-family clothes. In a sort of elaborate mourning-outfit with a surprisingly low bodice, and makeup that looked like it belonged in a Japanese play, she blended in well with her companions, but he knew without doubt it was her. He was surprised by the flipflop in his stomach. Remorse? Or just jealousy? She was leaning her head against the young lord with the cigarette.

"Well, I'm not surprised," Applecore said. "This is just her sort of place, isn't it?"

Before Theo could reply, Poppy looked up and saw him. She had been speaking, and for a moment she simply froze, mouth open, eyes suddenly wide and startled. Then she looked away and finished what she had been saying, forcing a laugh. When her companions responded and the conversation eddied away, she looked at him again. This time it was as though a gate had been slammed down behind her eyes: she stared as though she had never seen him before and never wished to see him again. After a moment, she whispered something to the pale-haired fairy and got up and left the room, her stiff, wide skirt swinging.

"Just a minute," Theo told Applecore. "I'll be right back."

"Don't you dare, Vilmos… !" the sprite began, but he was already up from the table and heading for the door.

She wasn't on the stairs. He went down into the full blare of the music and pushed alongside the pulsing swarm of dancers, looking for her on the floor or in one of the alcoves that lined the wall, dark places where people were kissing and groping, inhaling things out of odd little crystalline tubes, or engaging in other activities he couldn't quite make out, but about which he felt he could make a good guess or two.

He found her at the bar, waiting for a drink. "Hello," was the only thing he could think of to say.

"Do I know you?"

For a moment he wondered if he had mistaken a mere resemblance under thick makeup. But then he remembered the way she had looked at him across the tables, the anger and hurt. "You know me, Poppy. From the train."

"I don't think so. I certainly never talk to country riffraff on trains, so you must be mistaken. Very badly mistaken." She would not meet his eye.

"Look, I'm sorry it turned out that way. I didn't want to leave, but we had to."

Still looking toward the bartender mixing her drink, she said, "I'd hate to have to call for security — they are extremely rough here in Hellebore House, as you might guess. They would probably break your legs at the very least. And the wings that you are no doubt hiding under that ill-fitting jacket — well, they would probably rip them right off."

"All right. I'll leave you alone." It had been stupid coming after her — what had changed? And he could only hope she was exaggerating for effect and that she wouldn't really call security. The last thing he needed was for that to happen. "I just wanted you to know that I was sorry, and that I didn't lie to you about anything. It was just… bad timing." He turned and walked away.

"Stop. Come here."

He turned and looked at her, wondering if she had changed her mind and wanted to keep him in sight until she could call for the bouncers. She had an odd look in her eyes, a staring, red-rimmed intensity.

"I just want you to know," she said quietly, making him lean forward to hear until his face almost touched hers, "that I hate you, Theodorus weft-Daisy, or… or whoever you really are. Do you understand? I'll be staying at Thornapple House for another week before I go back to school, and you are not under any circumstances to call me there on my private line. Because I hate you, you wretched, horrible, heartless monster."

She abruptly reached up and pulled his head down toward hers, then kissed him so hard that her teeth banged against his. When she let go he tasted blood from his own lip. She was crying.

"Now go away," she said. "You've spoiled my evening." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, smearing her makeup, then turned to shout at the bartender, "Running water and black iron — where is my drink?"

Theo stumbled back across the club, a bit overwhelmed. Someone grabbed his arm near the bottom of the stairs. It took him a moment to recognize Zirus Jonquil: the young fairy lord was even more happily drunk than before, his hair disarranged and his shirt unbuttoned to reveal ivory skin almost to the navel. He looked quite wild and beautiful — there was something deeply, weirdly attractive about him that had nothing to do with sex. At least Theo hoped it had nothing to do with sex.

"Daisy! There you are. Where have old Cumberbumber and the fingerling girl got to?"

"Upstairs."

"Well, you're missing the most tremendous fun — one of the Campion lads was teasing the Hellebore security, who didn't take it well. They just took Campion out on a stretcher, but he was still ragging them even as they put him in the hospital coach… !"

"Hysterical." Theo was distracted by the sound of someone shouting at the top of the stairs — shouting very loud, he realized, if he could hear it over the thump and whine of the music. As he reached the door, something flew into his face like a confused bird, battering him for a moment in a flurry of wings and tiny limbs.

"There you are!" Applecore said as she fluttered backward. "Oh, and you, too, your lordship. I was just coming to look for you. It's your friend, Sedge."

But Theo for one did not have to be told that. Cumber Sedge, who had apparently had a bit more to drink than was absolutely optimum, was standing on the tabletop shouting at the gathering of fairy lordlings of which Poppy had been part. Theo was grateful to see there was no sign of her now — it was bad enough trying to figure out what was going on between the two of them without adding a shitfaced ferisher into the mix.

"… And just because you were born to the right families you think you're better… better than ev'ryone… !" Cumber swayed and pointed a wavering finger at the fairies. "You think ev'ry one wans… wants… wants to be like you!"

Poppy's companion, the young fairy with the cigarette holder, saw Zirus and called out, "Ah, there you are, Jonquil. Is this one of yours? If he is, you'd better silence him before someone takes offense and has his head."

"Point taken, Foxy," said Zirus. "Maybe we'll just trundle him home…" But Cumber Sedge would not be so easily muzzled.

"I don't belong to anyone!" he screamed. "You wingless bastards run everything, but you don't own me!"

Everyone in the room was watching now, and Theo saw someone on the stairs below him turn and head back down toward the ground floor, perhaps looking for the massive security guards. If Cumber went to jail, Theo had a feeling he might wind up there as well. For a moment he considered making a run for it — what did he really owe the little ferisher, anyway? — but the thought of wandering the alien streets showed that for the foolishness it was. He was relieved when Applecore settled on his shoulder again. "We have to get him out of here," he said. "Now."

"You have a gift for the obvious, boyo."

Poppy Thornapple's former companion was actually debating with Cumber — debating, or playing with him as a cat with a mouse. "Wingless?" the young fairy said with a lazy grin. "And did you not choose to be the same? If you are so fond of wings, little class-warrior, where are yours?"

Cumber Sedge gave out a drunken shriek of frustration. He crouched down, and for a horrifying moment Theo was positive he was about to leap onto his tormentor. Theo and Zirus both sprang toward the ferisher, but he was only setting his drink down on the table; an instant later he straightened up and yanked his shirt over his head. Somehow he managed to keep upright long enough for Theo and Zirus to reach his side and take his arms, but Cumber fought with surprising strength, and though Jonquil hung on, Theo could not; Cumber Sedge turned halfway around toward the table of young fairy nobility to show them the pair of jagged pink scars on his back.

"Where are my wings?" he shrieked. "Gone! Cut off! Because my mother wanted me to be like you! But I wish I had them still! Do you hear me? Because a fairy without wings is… is nothing! A flightless abomination!"

Zirus tugged the ferisher roughly off the table and wrapped his shirt back around him before shoving him toward the door. Theo followed closely, Applecore hunched down and riding his shoulder like a jockey. The Jonquil heir stopped in the doorway and bowed to the crowd, most of whom seemed more amused than anything else.

"Well," Zirus shouted above the music, "another exciting evening at Christmas, hey? But I think we'll get this fellow home now."

"Someday all their houses will burn down," Cumber Sedge murmured, "and I'll be one of the ones cheering." Only Theo heard him.

In the elevator down, Zirus was still cheerful. "Hidden depths, eh, Sedge?"

"None of you ever liked me," Cumber said quietly. "The whole time we were in school together, you ignored me. You didn't even bother to pretend."

For a moment Zirus Jonquil's face revealed something startlingly cool and hard. "Oh, stop blubbering, Sedge. What did you expect? You're only a ferisher, after all."

21 IN THORNAPPLE HOUSE

The big coach slid past the gates and down the long driveway lined with poplars. The lower part of the tower stood mostly dark, as was to be expected — it was halfway between midnight and dawn, after all, and even the most powerful families had to be seen conserving energy — but there was a cluster of lit windows on one of the top floors.

Father, up working late, she thought.

As she stepped from the car she could just hear the quiet moaning of the tree-nymphs in their restless sleep. The spells on them were powerful, but even so they could not be entirely silenced. "They're mourning all the other trees gone here in the middle of the City, all their kin killed or dispossessed," one of her childhood nurses had told her. "A terrible thing that was done here, terrible." That nurse had not lasted long, but her words had stayed with Poppy. In the small hours there was no traffic to hide the nymphs' lament and it left her shivering.

Malander Foxglove slid out behind her, pulled her back toward him. He twined his long arms around her and searched for her lips. His mouth smelled of myrtle pastilles, which he sucked to cover the faintly corrupt scent of pixie dust. "Shall I come in, fair Poppaea? Shall we have a little Mabon Eve drink?"

"I'm tired, Lander."

He raised an eyebrow, then leaned back against the side of the huge coach. "You've been strange all night, Pops. Not your normal entertaining self at all." He rubbed up a bit of elemental fire between his fingertips and lit his cigarette in its long holder, then blew a twining snake of smoke. "I hope this won't be an all-the-time thing, little one. That would get boring."

She hated it when he called her "little one." It was the kind of name her father used on those long-ago and extremely rare occasions when he had tried to be affectionate — the kind of nonspecific endearment that Poppy suspected allowed Lord Thornapple not to have to remember which of his seven daughters he was talking to. And it also reminded her of something else she would rather have forgotten, namely that she was half a head shorter than any of her friends. She stiffened in his arms. "I'm sorry to offend you, Master Foxglove."

His eyebrow lifted again at her tone. "Black iron, what crawled into you and died?" He let go of her and stretched lazily. "That's my ancient father's bodyguard Gummy waiting there at the door, so the old fellow must be here discussing affairs of the realm with your daddums. Surely you don't mind if I come in and see whether he wants to catch a ride home with me?"

"Your father must have his own coach."

"Not if he came with Lord Hellebore, which he probably did — the three of them are close as the Unseelie Host these days." He sniffed. "They seem to think that if they stopped interfering with everything, the whole place would turn back into the Wildwood again."

"I told you, Malander — I'm tired."

"No one wants to get under your petticoats that badly, Pops, least of all me. There are a million fish in Ys, so don't be so full of yourself. All I'm doing is coming in to see if my father wants a ride home."

"You hate your father."

"Yes, but only to keep things interesting."

She shrugged, too tired to argue, but the idea of having to talk to anyone, let alone having to fight that person off, made her feel almost ill. She was growing weary of Malander Foxglove. In fact, the entire night had been a mistake. After the terrible funeral for her brother, the oppressive stillness of the Grove, the weight of tradition around her like a thick fog, then the relatives and friends at the wake talking about Orian Thornapple as though he had been some kind of young Rose instead of what he was — a rotten little shit — she had thought it would do her good to go out with her friends somewhere loud and dark. But the fact was, she had to admit she didn't really like most of her friends. And seeing Theo hadn't helped. She had all but begged him to call her. What kind of way was that for a young woman of her class and connections to behave? He was probably laughing at her right now with his lowlife friends, especially that snippy little sprite.

Malander gave the large gray person a mock-salute. "What's the good word, Gummy?"

"Overtime," grunted the bodyguard.

Poppy dropped her black spiderweb cloak behind the front door. It was worth thousands, but she half-hoped someone would steal it, or at least step on it so she'd have an excuse to go out shopping to get another. She didn't want to be home. She hated this place. Then again, she didn't particularly want to be back at school either.

"By the way, who was that fellow you were talking with downstairs at the bar?" young Foxglove asked suddenly. "A bit heavyset, strange haircut? I didn't recognize him."

"What were you doing — spying on me?"

He blew a smoke ring. "I was on my way to the gents, as it happens. My, we are self-absorbed tonight, aren't we? And a little tense. Why, is he some new flame of yours… ?"

The question, and the hopelessness she felt even trying to answer that question in her own mind, still hung over her like the smoke ring when the lights in the hallway suddenly flickered once, then went out.

"Another cursed blackout." Malander Foxglove's sharp features flicked up like a red ghost as he drew on his cigarette. "You can't get those bloody-minded power plant workers to do a decent day's work. They need culling. There hasn't been a real crackdown in years." He curled an arm around Poppy. "Don't worry — I'll make a little light."

As fire sputtered silently between his fingers, she ducked out of his grasp. "I don't need your help, thank you."

"You're being very strange tonight, Pops. Come on, give me a kiss and let's make up."

For a moment she hesitated. She didn't know what she wanted, not really, and it would be nice to be held. Lander wasn't the worst boy in the world, even though he was irritating her a bit just now. But as he moved toward her, finger and thumb curled, elemental fire dancing between them, she saw something repellently acquisitive in his face, as though the foxfire revealed something that had been hidden. He was his father, or would be very soon. In fact, he was her own father, or as near as made no difference — just another in the legion of privileged lordlings who passed the world back and forth between them as though it were an object of little interest, and handled the lives of their women and servants with the same blithe unconcern.

The queen wouldn't put up with it. It was a startling thought because it was so unexpected. All those lessons learned in childhood that she thought she'd long since forgotten, all those famous old stories that she and the other girls used to ridicule after Young Blossoms meetings — they hadn't gone away at all. And whether they were true stories or not, what did it matter, really? The ideas were right. When the king made the queen angry, she didn't just bow her head and take it. She left him whenever the mood struck her. She took lovers, showed him up for a fool. She was Titania the Glorious, and if they irritated her, she would have burned up my father and Foxglove and all this lot like sawdust.

"Leave me alone, Malander," she said, and turned and walked across the dark entry hall.

But he would not leave her alone — she heard his footsteps behind her. "Ah. So we want to be chased, do we?"

She could call the guards. One word, even one strong thought, and the hob would have half a dozen brawny creatures down on him in seconds. She wasn't some servant girl to be trifled with, even if he was the son of one of the leading families. She was a Thornapple — her father was First Councillor. But if he didn't go quietly, if there was a ruckus and a public scene, Daddy would be so tiresome about it…

She reached deep into her memory for a charm. It was something she hadn't used in years, since the days of sneaking out of the residence hall with Calpurnia and Julia, the Woodbine sisters, and coming back late to find Miss Stonecrop waiting for them, Old Stony so angry her spectacles were heat-fogged. Poppy whispered the words under her breath, felt for the thought in the way her tutors had showed her — it was a wriggling thing, small, shiny, and hard to grasp as a fish in muddy water — and caught it.

"Poppy? Iron and blood, where did you go? Poppy?"

Suppressing a giggle, which would give her away to Malander Foxglove's sharp senses no matter what the charm did, she turned and went right past his outstretched hand, retaining the memory of his stunned, irritated face in the glow of the elemental light to enjoy later. He was sharp, though — he felt the faint breeze of her passage and lunged at her, but missed. She hurried toward the stairwell. She would take an elevator from the next floor up.

The irritating thing about elevators, she told herself as she trudged onto what by her count must be the twenty-fifth floor landing, was that they didn't work in power blackouts. These more and more frequent outages were becoming very annoying, and this one was certainly inconvenient. She could muster enough force on her own to run one or two small appliances — she might not have applied herself much during her tutoring, but she had natural ability — however the elevators were all slaved onto one main circuit. To make one work, she'd have to be able to make them all work, and even her father with all his years and experience didn't have the power to do that on his own.

We've made ourselves prisoners in our own houses, she thought, although she had to admit that might be a touch overdramatic.

"I am attempting to engage auxiliary energies," the hob said into her ear — and into the ear of everyone else in the building. "I will return the house to normal as soon as possible."

Poppy had passed a few servants and family functionaries on the stairs, some of them groping blindly, some of them carrying their own little lights they had made; if she had not been used to the deference of underlings she might have thought it strange that they did not look at her, and even more so that many of them almost bumped into her and did not stop even to sketch a bow or a quick curtsy. But climbing more than two dozen floors at the end of a long, confusing, and ultimately rather dreadful night made her less observant than she might have been, and she had also underestimated the strength of her own conjuring: it did not occur to her that they could not see her or sense her at all — that the charm was still in place.

Even without the inarguable darkness, she would have known the power in the building was off by the effortless way the door swung open at the lightest push. The entrances to the family's private section of the Thornapple tower were all so crisscrossed with charms that ordinarily a large coach would have bounced off it, should such a thing be found in the twenty-fifth floor lobby in the first place. But now, and without her even having to breathe her own secret house-name, it opened for her like a lover's arms. In the green flicker of the emergency witchlights she could see the corridor stretch before her but little else. Something was strange, but of course everything was strange in a blackout, and she was still thinking about the door.

No, we're not just prisoners, we're slaves to our own assumptions. Because with the power off, anyone could just walk in here and do anything. The arrogance of our strength! she thought. Not even a bolt on the door.

It was only when she was halfway down the corridor and the startlingly tall figure of Lord Hellebore stepped out in front of her, glowing with witchlight of his own manufacturing, that she understood her mistake. She was on the office floor, not the residence. She swallowed a squeak of surprise at seeing him, dark-haired and glowering, his skin corpselike in the nimbus of sickly fire, and then had to suppress another gasp when he walked past her.

I'm still wearing the charm!

He stopped and hesitated, thin face lifted as though he scented something, and she knew she should speak up — it was rude to be invisible, even in your own house — but something in his hard face choked off the admission as thoroughly as a hand around her throat. Nidrus Hellebore shook his head once, not so much a movement of confusion as a refocusing of feral attentions, then strode to the window at the end of the passageway. As he turned and came back, Poppy shrank against the wall and held her breath, although she still couldn't have quite said why. Even if he caught her, the worst that could happen was a scolding, certainly. She was in her own house. She hadn't done it on purpose.

"What is it?" Now Lord Foxglove, Lander's father, had come out into the corridor. "Are we attacked?"

The contempt in Hellebore's voice was quite impressive. "If so, then someone has attacked a third of the city. No, you bloody fool, it's another power breakdown."

Foxglove's own halo of witchlight shrank a little, as though he had been slapped. "It's just… the matter we're talking about… it makes me…"

"If you're going to say it makes you act like a coward, don't bother. I noticed." Hellebore stopped again, turning his head from side to side. "But it does feel like there's been someone here. And not too long ago."

Foxglove did not appear to be listening. "It's just… I don't think… there must be another way…"

"What are you two doing out there?" called another voice — Poppy's father. "Come in here and close the door. The hob will sort it out."

"On our way, Aulus." Hellebore said it in a loud, cheerful voice; an instant later he turned back to Lord Foxglove like a viper. "You are a bloody fool," he said, just loud enough for Poppy to hear a few feet away. "I should have brought in Monkshood instead of you. He may be mad, but at least he has some grit. Who needs your ridiculous Coextensive faction, anyway? It will all be meaningless soon. Look out there! Miles of black. No power. It's all coming apart and you know very well it's not going to get better. The question is, are you with us or not? This is the time for great decisions and, yes, taking risks. Even more important, we've risked everything, Thornapple and I. If you think you can just back out now… well, I'm sure you remember what happened to Violet."

"But I just… is there no other way… ?"

"If you think that, you're living in a magical world, Foxglove. You might as well be a mortal and go fly to the moon. I asked, do you remember what happened to Violet?"

"Of course, but…"

"And think about Violet House. Think about the empty lot in the middle of Eventide where it used to be. Black, burnt trees. The ground sown with salt."

"But… !"

"Just think about it from time to time. Now come — our host is waiting." Hellebore took Foxglove's arm — for a moment their halos of light blended, shimmered. Then they went through the door into her father's office and the corridor was dark again.

"I am attempting to engage auxiliary energies," said the hob, and this time, with her nerves pulled tight as lute strings, Poppy did indeed let out a little squeak of surprise. "I will return the house to normal as soon as possible."

She hurried back toward the stairwell, hoping now that the charm would last long enough to get her onto the right floor, past the servants and into her bed. She didn't care if it was in the dark. She just wanted to be able to pull up the covers and make the world go away for a while.

It's none of my business, she told herself. Whatever they're doing, it's none of my business.

I hate this house.

22 STATUS QUO ANTE

It was not easy to fall asleep after an evening like that, but he managed at last. He probably would have been better off staying awake.

The old, familiar bad dream came back for the first time since he left his own world, although in truth he had felt its presence all evening, from his first view of the bony, angular heights of Hellebore House.

In many ways the dream seemed the same as before, Theo imprisoned in his own body, sharing it with an alien presence. As with the other nightmares, he stared out through a surrounding murk, but in this version it wasn't mist that encircled him but smoke: he was looking down from the top of a tall building, the stars hugely bright and close, the air sour with the smell of burning. The City below him looked like a lava field, with dozens of patches of bright red glow, each signifying an entire neighborhood in flames, providing the only light in the dark city. Screams drifted up to his high perch, as thin with distance as the mewing of kittens, but what was worse than the suffering going on below him was that he could feel himself enjoying it, savoring the terror that ran wild in the shadowy streets. The alien presence was completely in control. Every shriek gave him a jolt of pleasure. It was like sex. It was better than sex, because he, or rather the thing that wore his body like a suit of clothing, was having his way with an entire world.

Theo woke up sweating and whimpering, and was helplessly grateful to find himself in his room in Daffodil House. He asked for the time and the hob-voice told him in a desultory way that it was after midnight. Fairies didn't seem very specific about time, he had learned, and their houses followed that pattern.

He knew he was not going to be falling asleep again any time soon, not while his heart was still rattling in his chest. He asked to have the lights on, then went into the bathroom and got himself a glass of water, marveling anew at how bizarrely ordinary a place this could seem, as though he were spending the night in a decent but not overwhelming hotel instead of in the heart of magical Fairyland. The tap turned, the water came out. Experimentally, he flushed the toilet. The water went around and around — not even backward, the way some people claimed it did in Australia. He could only be thankful it didn't have a little paper strip across it reading "Sanitized for your Protection."

Mints on the pillow would be okay, though.

It was no use trying to jolly himself. No matter how apparently ordinary the setting, he was stuck in a very strange place. People, no not even people, things were trying to kill him. He didn't know the rules. His only friend was the size of a ballpoint pen.

He pulled Uncle Eamonn's book out of his jacket pocket. Both leather jacket and notebook were looking a little the worse for wear, wrinkled from being sat on, a bit water-stained in places. He had felt sure that the book was the reason he had been dragged out of his own world, but so far no one had asked to see it or even asked him about it, even though he had mentioned it to Lady Aemilia and Cumber Sedge, just to name two people here in Daffodil House.

Theo still had no real idea of how things worked here, and he was wondering if a rereading of the notebook might help. There were things in it that he'd barely paid attention to at the time because he'd thought it was fiction — because who could ever have imagined it wasn't?

It's like someone gave me a manual on lion-taming to read, but didn't warn me I was about to be smeared with gravy and parachuted into the African veldt.

But the frustrating thing was that it wasn't an instruction book. There was no handy dictionary, no index of facts or explanation of local etiquette. It was a story written by a visitor, the areas of detail apparently arbitrary and maddeningly inconsistent.

Theo began browsing through the notebook, skipping the early autobiographical sections entirely. He wasn't even certain what he was looking for, but in the few short days since he'd crossed over or passed through or whatever the hell you called it, he'd become steadily less certain he knew what was going on. Strange as it had been, the Larkspur family forest where he had first arrived had at least felt something like what he would have expected Fairyland to be. Now it was clear that it had been no more than a private game preserve, the grounds of a rich clan's stately home. The real Fairyland was here, in this vast city — or at least it seemed to contain most of Faerie's residents. At the same time, the weird modernity seemed to carry over into other areas as well, class struggle, the power of wealth, the importance of technology…

A word dimly remembered from high school social studies caught his eye and he stopped to read.

Although present-day Faerie is an oligarchy, and there have always been powerful families, as far as I can tell some kind of shift happened about two hundred years ago, their time — I cannot be exact, because time in Faerie is a slippery thing, and comparing it to our own world makes it even more so.

Faerie was once a true monarchy, ruled (as mortals themselves have described in poetry and folktale) by a king and queen. Shakespeare called them Oberon and Titania, but they have many other names, like Gwynn ap Nudd and Maeve (or Mab). In fact, they seem to have many names and no names because they were the only king and queen, and had been so for most of the memory of the fairy race, just as what I named New Erewhon was called simply "the City" by all in Faerie, since there were no other cities, only towns and villages.

In any case, during the time of the last Gigantine War — a war between the fairy-folk of New Erewhon and the race of giants (whose origins and habitat no one can explain better than that they come from "the Giant Country") something happened to the king and queen. They are commonly held to have been literally killed by the giants, but I have heard other explanations that suggest the king and queen died exerting some great and final force that saved the City and defeated those terrible enemies; there is a song of armored giants approaching the heart of Faerie, burning and smashing all before them, that makes them sound more fearsome than even the most modern war machines of my own world. Whatever the case, the monarchs of Fairyland fell during the last struggle in the ruins of their stronghold (which for some reason seems to have been called by a name that translates as "the Cathedral," instead of "the Palace" or anything else you might expect) and the reins of power were afterward taken up by what are commonly called the Seven Families — seven of the most powerful clans who (either heroically or opportunistically, depending on how much cynicism is applied to history) created a power structure to hold Faerie together in the vacuum that followed the death of the king and queen.

All of the famous Seven — the Daffodils, Hollyhocks, Primroses, Hellebores, Thornapples, Violets, and Lilies — were already among the land's most powerful families. Each had the normal clannish proclivities found among the high houses — the Hellebores and Daffodils fascinated by science, although in very different ways, the Violets and Lilies skilled in the creative arts, Thornapples drawn to business, and the Hollyhocks and Primroses engaged by politics. One trait they all shared, though, was a desire to rule over Faerie. After the initial panic was over and order restored they were forced by popular will to reinstate the Parliament of Blooms, but real power remained — and still remains — with these clans and their closest allies.

Then the lights went out.

For a moment Theo felt certain something really bad had happened — that someone had discovered he was reading something he shouldn't and now they were coming to get him — but then he remembered the blackout in Tansy's house and various comments he'd heard about Faerie's untrustworthy power situation. When the hob-voice proclaimed that alternative power operations would begin soon and that the proper authorities had all been contacted, he could not entirely forget he was trapped in pitch-blackness in a very strange house in a place full of ogres and worse things, but he felt at least a bit reassured. Thus, when someone suddenly knocked at the door he let out only a very small scream of surprise.

"Who… who is it?"

"Cumber Sedge to see you," explained the hob, persisting in its duties even in the middle of a blackout.

"Me, Cumber," said the person in question.

The ferisher had brought his own light, a sphere the size of a large marble which gave off enough radiance to illuminate the young fairy's mournful face but not much more. "Sorry to bother you, Master Vilmos. The hob said your light was on. Well, until all the lights went out."

"Call me Theo, please. Come on in. How are you feeling?"

"You mean from the drinking? Not bad. It'll be worse when I wake up tomorrow — good thing it's Mabon and Lady Aemilia isn't expecting me to work. But about how I behaved? Pretty wretched, to tell you the truth." He followed Theo into the room and, perhaps in some kind of penance, declined a chair and sat cross-legged on the carpet.

"Ah, it happens. Everybody has to let loose sometimes." Theo hesitated. "Unless they're going to execute you for it or something."

"Nobody goes to the Well for saying things like that," Cumber said. "At least, not unless they're a goblin."

"Well, that's good. Not for goblins, I guess, but I'm glad they're not going to have you shot for insulting a Flower or something."

The ferisher nodded. Even in the thin glow of the magic marble or whatever it was, he looked profoundly unhappy. Theo had thought of the long-faced Cumber Sedge as about grad-student age, but he realized now the butterscotch-colored fairy was probably at least five times that — ten times, for all Theo knew. He sipped his water and waited for the other to say something. It was a long wait.

"So, does this happen all the time?" Theo asked at last. "This blackout thing?"

Cumber shrugged. "It's been getting worse. All the power plants are strained — Lord Daffodil has three of them in Ivy and I hear they're all having problems. That's one of the reasons for the big meeting they're having."

"Oh, yeah?" Theo wondered what had brought the young fairy to his room. Cumber seemed to have something on his mind, but perhaps he just wanted the company of someone who didn't think he was a disgrace and embarrassment. "Interesting. What big meeting is that?"

Cumber looked stricken. "You haven't heard? Why hasn't anyone told you?"

"Told me what? Why should they bother to tell me?"

"Because you're one of the other reasons for the meeting."

"I'm… Hang on, what?"

"Lady Aemilia was talking about it yesterday. Lord Daffodil knows that some of the other Houses were trying to get hold of you, and since you're staying here, he figures he has a bit of a bargaining chip."

"Bargaining chip?" Theo felt a sudden chill. "You mean they're going to make some deal, hand me over to those people who were after me?"

"No, no!" Cumber said hurriedly. "No, I can't imagine that — Lady Aemilia's way too interested in you, for one thing. But Lord Daffodil knows the Hellebores and Thornapples and that lot want you, so apparently he's decided he's going to make them worry a little, wondering what secrets you're telling him. Which reminds me, I've been kicking myself for letting Zirus drag us out tonight, especially onto Hellebore family turf — it was madness. Your friend Applecore's wrong, though — the people in charge here do care what happens to you, at least as long as you're valuable to them. And if something had gone wrong while we were outside the compound, they would probably have blamed me." He had the look of someone who'd eaten something that was not agreeing with him.

Hold on, Theo thought. Thornapples? Poppy's family? They're after me, too? Could she have known that? "I don't get this — any of it. These bad guys think I'm telling secrets to Daffodil or something? What secrets? I don't know anything. Why are they all so interested in me? These people don't even like mortals."

"This is why I wanted to come talk to you, Mast… Theo. I feel terrible that no one's telling you anything. Not that I know much. But I do know one important thing — something that you need to know, too." Cumber took a deep breath. "Can I get myself a glass of water? I feel like one of the Great Beasts is nesting in my mouth."

"Of course. Be my guest." The bathroom and the tap were only a few steps away, but Theo didn't relax until the ferisher had returned with his water and sat down on the floor again. In movies, someone who was about to explain something important always got shot in the back or stabbed or something just before they could tell you the Astonishing Truth.

"Well," Cumber said, "first off, you're not a mortal. You're one of us."

"What?" Theo had to think for a moment to make sure he'd actually heard what he thought he'd heard. He was suddenly finding it hard to breathe. "You're joking. You must be joking, right?"

Cumber Sedge shook his head. "I don't know why they haven't told you, but I know it's true. I've seen the test results. The readings on your Index of Humors — well, you're on the low end of normal, but you're certainly not mortal. No, it couldn't be anything else. And I heard Lady Aemilia talking to her brother about it."

"Her brother…" He was dazed.

"Lord Daffodil. She called him when the results first came in."

"But… but…" He tried to find something he could use as a weapon against the enormity of the attack. "I'm not human? That's bullshit! I… I had parents, for Christ's sake!"

Cumber flinched as if struck, but kept his eyes fixed on Theo even through obvious discomfort. "You had people who raised you," he said quietly. "Mortal people. I'm sure they were very good to you, but that doesn't mean you're related to them. Changelings seldom recognize the truth on their own. And after a certain point in their lives, they are human. You probably wouldn't have passed our tests after you'd been there a few more years, not to mention all the other things that could have accelerated or even finished off the mortalization process — having a family, undergoing a religious conversion, a serious illness…" For a moment the ferisher's guilty gloom was brightened by discussing his subject of expertise. "There have been cases where changelings in the mortal world have even denounced other changelings without for a moment reflecting on why they were so certain…"

This was like one of those topsy-turvy dreams, where someone could tell you things that you knew were wrong yet you couldn't summon a useful argument against it. "Hold on, hold on!" Theo waved his hands. His own voice sounded distant, as if someone else was speaking. "If I'm one of these… these fairies… then why are they so interested in me? Why all the tests? They couldn't have needed all that just to tell whether I was one of them or not — those reflex tests, the color-recognizing stuff…"

"As Lady Aemilia said — she was telling you the truth about this, anyway, Theo — they haven't seen anyone like you for a long time. There isn't much travel between your world and ours anymore. There aren't many changeling babies, and I haven't heard of any that have crossed back over to our side for ages."

"But… I feel like a mortal, damn it!"

"You probably do — that's how you were raised. But more importantly, you feel like you. When have you ever been anyone else to compare it to?"

He tried to think of a reply but couldn't. This new dream, this nightmare, was defeating him. "Did Applecore know about this?"

"Not as far as I know. It only came up after Lady Aemilia saw the test results. Anyway, your friend doesn't seem like the type who'd keep her mouth shut about something important."

Theo had dozens more questions, but Cumber Sedge had very few answers. Tests could not show who his real parents were. The ferisher knew of no famously missing children, nor as far as he could tell did Lady Aemilia — Theo's original identity was a mystery. Switching babies with mortals had been very common in the past but was almost unheard of these days, largely because of the Clover Effect.

Theo felt like he wanted to cry, but at the same time he felt like he was drifting in a vacuum, unable to touch or even to remember the normal life he had been leading until moments earlier. Even in the midst of such abnormal events as he had experienced lately, he had still felt himself to be a very ordinary person. That was gone now: he literally had no idea of who or what he was. He sat for a while in silence, full of anger and confusion.

At last, he let out a deep, shuddering breath. "Listen, I appreciate you telling me this and everything, and someday I'll probably thank you — but for now could you get the hell out? I'd like to be on my own."

"Certainly. I understand." Cumber got to his feet, not entirely steady. "I'm sorry, but I thought you should know."

"Right." He showed him to the door, tried to find something else to say as the ferisher stood awkwardly in the hallway outside, but couldn't. It was only after he slammed the door that he realized he'd sent away the only light.

He groped back to the bed and lay there in the dark, his mind a flurry of fragmentary images that did not ever quite coalesce into sense — his childhood, his mother's dying, the crazy things he had seen here, even Cat's angry, pale face. It went on for hours, or seemed to, a helpless roller-coaster ride through seemingly unending confusion.

What am I? Where did I come from? Is my whole life just a stupid, made-up story?

A sudden, ugly thought, alone in a lightless room in a strange land: Is that what the dream's about? That thing inside me, looking out through my eyes? Maybe I've got some kind of evil-fairy side and now it's starting to come out.

Mom said she couldn't love me the way she should have, he suddenly remembered. Because I didn't seem right. Wasn't that what she said? She knew.

She knew.

The power was still off when he finally fell asleep, a transition from one helpless darkness to another.

Daffodil Comb was in a barnlike structure underneath the main tower, a vast room that resembled a high school gymnasium. The power had come back but the overhead lights in the huge room were dim and there were enough small flying people in the air to make details hard to discern, so Theo could only guess at its original purpose.

Do these people even play sports? he wondered. Normal ones? It was depressing how little he knew about the world in which he was presently forced to live — and worse, how little he knew about these creatures who were apparently his own kind. He couldn't think about that just now, though — it was like his whole mind was an aching bruise. Easier to concentrate on things that didn't matter.

Poor, snobby Rufinus had said something about being on a fencing team — that was the reason he had thought himself capable of handling the hollow-men. He had been horribly wrong, of course. So this world had fencing, but what else? It was hard to imagine fairies playing field hockey or football. In fact, the ruling class seemed more like an entire nation of country club tennis players — much easier to picture them sipping drinks on the patio after a match, expensive sweaters draped across their shoulders, than getting into a sweaty half-court basketball game…

"Hey, giant feet, you want tae watch where you're going," shrilled a thickly accented voice. "Or is that how you spend your days off, stravaigin' aboot and crushing innocent people?"

Theo froze and looked down. The floor was as alive with traffic as the air above him, tiny pixies and other small creatures filing in and out of the comb, scurrying across the floor to the propped outer doors of the room in long lines, like mice leaving Hamelin.

"Oh, sweet Jee…" He caught himself. "Sorry! Sorry. I didn't… step on anyone, did I?"

"No, but not because you're bluidy graceful or annythin'."

Theo carefully got down on his knees. The creature standing in front of him was a little larger than Applecore, but a uniform gray-green and covered with bristling spikes; Theo couldn't help thinking he looked like some kind of mascot for the Artichoke Council. He was carrying a toolbox. Oh, my God, Theo suddenly thought. If Cumber's right, this guy's kind of a relative of mine — all these little bugs are. Closer to me than Mom, at least biologically. The thought was yet another in the category of too-big-and-too-strange; he simply couldn't do anything with it. "Hey, I really am sorry, man. I was… I'm new here."

The spiky little person stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Aye, it happens."

"Could you help me, maybe? I just need to find someone named Applecore. A sprite. Do you know her?"

"No. Don't like 'em, either. Bluidy wingers think they rule the roost. Hang on." He put two fingers small as the points of sharpened pencils to his mouth and whistled, surprisingly loud — preet, preet, preet! Theo didn't know what he was supposed to say, so he didn't say anything.

An instant later another little person dropped out of the air from somewhere just above Theo's head — a male sprite, as far as he could tell, a handsome, graceful little fellow wearing a sort of toga. The winged man hovered, looking at Theo with only limited curiosity, then shouted down to the creature on the floor, "What do you want, thistlehead?"

"I'm late tae work. This big lummox is luiking for one of yours and he almost stepped on me — some flappy bint, hight Applecore. Ring any chimes?"

The flying man ascended a couple of feet and examined Theo's face with some interest. "I think she's staying in the guest quarters," he called down.

"Fine. You take care of him, then. I have tae go clean the silvertangs for the muckle stoorage battery and I don't have time tae waste on flutterby business." The spiky little man turned and stalked away, joining one of the lines of small creatures snaking toward the outer door.

"Friendly guy," Theo said.

"Those thorns aren't just for show," said the sprite, laughing. "Hogboons are a grumbly lot. But he's all right, as they go. I'll see if I can turn her up. You just stay here. Step on one of those little needlenoses, you probably won't hurt them — they're tough as old leather — but you'll get a nasty prickle in your foot and no mistake." His wings blurred into invisibility and he was off.

Daffodil Comb had its own open-plan cafeteria, as Applecore had told him, in another large room just off what he now thought of as the gym. The smallest tables were the size of a silver dollar, but some were large enough to accommodate half a dozen diners the size of a G.I. Joe doll. This was still a bit small for Theo, however, so he made his way carefully to one edge of the eating area so he could sit down on the floor with his back against the wall. Applecore perched on his knee with her tea and scone. At midmorning there weren't many other people in the cafeteria, but those who were seemed to find the spectacle of the sprite and her monstrous friend quite amusing; they giggled and whispered behind their hands. He felt like he was back in high school, except that even during the worst adolescent traumas of high school he'd never had to worry about whether he was actually human.

"I don't know what to say, Theo, truly."

"You didn't know?"

"By the Trees, I didn't! I swear!"

"Could Cumber be lying? Or wrong?"

She took a sip, thinking. "Anything's possible. But it doesn't seem likely. He's a good sort, that young fella, and he strikes me as a smart one, too."

"But… but I don't feel like one of these people! Besides, it doesn't explain any of this other crap, even if it's true. Do you think that's why those other people were after me, the ones who hired those cave trolls? Because they wanted to do experiments on me, like Lady Aemilia did?"

"Doesn't seem likely." Her little forehead furrowed. "Fact is, boyo, this still doesn't make any sense."

"Just tell me one thing. What are you doing here?"

She frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just what it sounds like. I've been wanting to ask you, but I was too scared. You're the only friend I've got here." He thought for a moment, tried to smile. "To tell the truth, even back home I've only got one other friend to speak of, so you're in some pretty select company." What would Johnny think of the news that Theo had fairy blood? He wouldn't believe it, of course, but he'd enjoy the chance to comment on the possibilities, that was for sure. "Back at Tansy's house, you were going to let me go to the station and that would have been that. Instead you've come all the way here, risked your life, you can't even stay in your own home with your friends — all for someone you don't know that well, and who's probably going to get his ass killed anyway… !" She glared as one of his self-pitying hand gestures almost knocked her off his knee. "Sorry. But I don't get it. Even if it's not my fault, I'm into something deep. Why are you risking your life hanging around with me?"

She finished eating and brushed the crumbs off on his pants leg. "It's not for the fancy accommodations, that's for sure. That scone was baked in a goblin sweatshop or I'm not an Apple." She stared at him for a moment. "Why am I still here? I'm not entirely certain, and that's the truth. Part of it was… well, because when I first met you, I was surprised. See, I've never met a human before…"

"But I'm not a human, apparently!"

"You might as well be, the way you interrupt. Root and Bough, Theo, you're a pig sometimes and no mistake." She brought back the glare for a moment; he put his hand over his mouth. "Better. See, I'd never met a human before. And I expected you to be, I don't know, big and mean and stupid, I guess. Like a giant. But whatever else you are, you're not mean."

Now it was his turn to glare.

"That's more like it," she said, grinning. "It's true, but. You may be a pain in the arse, but you're basically a good sort. Anyway, when I brought you through, you were so… helpless…"

"It just gets better and better."

"Be glad you have at least a few appealing qualities, boyo, however pathetic. Now pay attention. I didn't feel good about what was going on from the first, the whole thing about bringing you here. See, it was my job to get you through that gateway no matter what. That ugly dead thing showing up just meant I didn't have to argue with you or trick you. So it was a hard decision to let you go off to the City on your own, but to tell the truth you were a rude little shite with Dolly and that made it easier. Then everything went to buggery at the station."

"So that's why you're here? Because I'm a loser and you felt sorry for me?"

"If you want to think of it that way, Theo, then I suppose so." Her face had become surprisingly serious. "Good friendships have started with less."

He remembered what he'd said to Dolly, and found he didn't like that Theo very much, either. "Yeah, okay. You're right — friendship is friendship, I guess."

"That wasn't all." She finished her tea, rolled off his knee and buzzed over to put the little tray on the counter; a few moments later she had settled again. "See, I didn't entirely trust Count Tansy. Not saying he meant you any harm, just that I doubted he had your best interests at heart. One of my brothers used to be his errand-runner and wound up in trouble because of it — Skin, the oldest. It's ancient history now, but because of it my brother's only got one working wing and he's pretty much housebound. He does the family accounts and helped look after us little ones while we were growing. Tansy was playing some complicated political game and using Skin to send messages. My brother got jumped by a gang of hard pixies and got a terrible beating. You probably think that sounds funny."

"No, I don't. I'm learning. And I've been through something like that myself once upon a time, but I was lucky enough to get away without being permanently damaged." That bad night out in the parking lot of that bar called the Stop Sign — it seemed like centuries ago now. "But was what happened to your brother Tansy's fault?"

"Not because he arranged it, but because he put Skinny in a bad situation without giving him the proper information, then didn't seem too sad when it all went wrong and my brother got hurt bad. Sure, the Daisy clan arranged a nice little pension for him, but which do you think he'd rather have, money or both his wings?"

Theo sighed. "I'm trying to understand it all, but I keep coming back to this one huge thing I can't get past. Someone's telling me that I'm not human. I've been human all my life! How am I supposed to take that?"

"You didn't know there was anything else but human to be all your life," Applecore said. "Try to think of it like you've just been told you weren't — where was it you're from? America? That you weren't American, like you thought, but Frankish or something."

"French," he said absently. It was a good suggestion, but he wasn't quite ready for those kind of mental calisthenics yet. "But I still don't get it. How could something like that happen? I wasn't adopted. My mother told me about when she went to the hospital to have me. She was upset because I arrived at a bad time and she didn't get solid food for twenty-eight hours or something."

"Changelings aren't adopted, they're — what's the word? Substituted. Usually before the wee one is old enough to talk. At least, that's how it used to be when it happened more often. Someone took your parents' real baby away, or it died. Either way, there was an… opening, and they were given you instead."

Theo shook his head. "So… so somewhere I must have… fairy parents?"

"Stands to reason."

"Can I find them?" Although the idea was not entirely pleasant. He suddenly remembered a song he had written years earlier, a bluesy little piece of braggadocio about having a lightning storm for a father. Man, this is even weirder. I thought it was boring, coming out of the middle-class suburbs. If I only knew!

"You can try, I's'pose. But people here in Fairie — at least among your kind, if you'll excuse the expression, the larger folk — aren't all that interested in their families at the best of times. It's the way they are — you saw it with that Thornapple girl."

"Poppy."

"Whatever her name was. And, let's be honest here, boyo, leaving your child with mortals, probably never to see him again, that isn't exactly the act of a loving parent, now is it?"

"You're saying they wouldn't be interested in meeting me."

"What's the kindest way to put it? No, I'm thinking, they would not. Especially if powerful people want to kill you. You're a bit of a mixed blessing even for those of us who like you…"

"Theo Vilmos," a soft but steely voice said in his ear, "Lord Daffodil commands your presence in the Audience Chamber."

"What's wrong?" Applecore looked concerned.

"You didn't hear that? A voice just told me I'm supposed to go to the Audience Chamber and see Lord Daffodil."

She pursed her lips and let out a near-inaudible whistle. "You're moving up in the world, fella. Do you know where it is?" When he only shook his head, she said, "Then I'll take you. Maybe see if I can stick around for the audience. Lord Daff doesn't show himself all that often."

"I'm glad that my miserable life is at least providing you with a few interesting moments."

She chortled. "Yeah, something new every minute with you, boyo."

The Daffodil House Audience Chamber seemed to take up a large part of the main tower's twenty-sixth floor. It certainly had its own very large lobby. After a brief inspection, Theo was waved toward the door by the creature sitting behind the desk — which, Theo decided, since it was almost seven feet tall and had a tusked, wrinkled face a bit like a warthog's, was probably more security than secretary — but it took one look at Applecore and shook its misshapen head. "Not on the list."

"She's with me," Theo said with what he hoped was an admirable determination.

The Appointment Beast looked at him with something that might have been amusement in its tiny, red-rimmed eyes, except amusement seldom looked so much like the urge to chew off someone's face. "Oooh," it said. "Very chivalrous. The sprite stays out here anyway. Now, how many pieces of you am I sending in to see the boss? One? Or more?"

"It's not worth arguing, Theo," she said. "He's just a pig with a little too much authority."

"You cut me right to the tenderloin, girlie." The beast turned his malevolent eyes back on Theo. "You going in?"

"I'll meet you here," Applecore said. "You'll find me just far enough away from the desk that the air-conditioning starts to take the edge off this fella's breath."

The warthog-thing chuckled in appreciation as Theo stepped past him. He wished he could feel so cheerful. The fact that the door was whispering like an idiot beggar didn't help.

"Clean as a bean," it fluted as he walked through, its childlike voice suddenly quite loud, "Clean as a bean. One nymph-binding. Strange clothes. No weapons. Clean as a bean."

The Audience Chamber, which had sounded as though it should be all tapestries and stained glass windows, was instead a large and extremely modern room, one entire wall a floor-to-ceiling window with a magnificent view of the corner of the Daffodil compound that contained the conference center building, and also of the City beyond. The window glass — if it was glass — seemed to bend the light in an odd way. Three figures were waiting for him, still as statues: Lady Aemilia sat between two male fairies, one light, one dark. He wondered how long they'd all been sitting in silence. Did they talk with their minds or something? He seemed to remember Applecore saying something like that about the Flower families. Creepy.

Hold on, if I'm one, could I do that too? Or is it too late for me? That would be typical Theo Vilmos luck, of course — to have all the disadvantages of being nonhuman, with none of the benefits.

Lady Aemilia stood up, smiling graciously if a bit perfunctorily. She was wearing a sort of suit made out of a rough, pale fabric — something that, like a complimentary bathrobe from a five-star hotel, managed to look both simple and extremely expensive. "Good Mabon to you, Theo Vilmos. It is kind of you to join us. I hope the power outage didn't inconvenience you too much. They're such a problem for us these days." She indicated the dark-haired man. "This is our honored guest, Lord Hollyhock."

Theo was a little startled. The Hollyhocks were the family who had commissioned Tansy to get Theo to the City in the first place, so this must be some blood relative of the guy who'd ended up a mummified heart in Tansy's silver box, but in all the excitement since then he had almost forgotten about them. The fairy lord didn't look much like he'd suffered any major losses lately. He wore a beautiful, slightly shimmery suit and was handsome in a long-boned way, as so many here were, but seemed small by Flower-fairy standards. Hollyhock wore rimless spectacles, but otherwise had a face that Theo thought belonged in a Renaissance painting, as if he should be standing beside the throne smirking at Columbus while the poor fellow tried to talk Isabella and Ferdinand into loaning him some ships. He surprised Theo by smiling at him in a way that was almost nice. "Master Vilmos. We meet at last."

"And this is your host," said Lady Aemilia, "Lord Daffodil."

Theo's first thought was that the fellow's name should be Lord Dandelion instead. He was tall by anyone's standards, with a great mane of hair that stood out in all directions, a handsome, heavy-jawed face, and a closely trimmed beard that was little more than pale stubble. His sand-colored, unstructured suit was impeccably casual. His white-streaked hair was sand-colored, too. Of all the Flower-folk Theo had seen, he was the only one who actually looked like he was past the prime of adulthood. Theo suspected that meant he was very, very old indeed. To look at, he might have been a vigorous sixty, the kind of man who'd buy your business, fire you, and then steal your girlfriend as well and take her away on his yacht.

"You have been treated well, I trust?" Lord Daffodil's tone suggested he could think of a thousand things that were more important.

It was hard not to get on his knees to this impressive personage and genuflect, harder still not to say something that was at least politely reassuring, since it was obviously no more than a courtesy inquiry, but Theo was beginning to think that whatever his own actual heritage might turn out to be, his mortal-world approach to things was of some use here. "Well, the roof didn't leak in my room or anything, but I haven't exactly been showered with information."

Lord Daffodil allowed one brow to climb just the exact distance to connote slightly amused disdain, a piece of precision engineering that Theo could not help admiring. He wondered if the master of Daffodil House had some goblin woman pluck and shape those impressive eyebrows. "You feel you have been tricked in some way? That we have taken advantage?"

"I feel that there are things going on here that concern me, but I'm the last to know about them. Lady Aemilia," he said abruptly, "I've just been told that your tests prove I'm not really mortal — that I have fairy blood. Is that true?"

She smiled. It was a sympathetic one, ever so slightly sad. Damn, Theo thought, can't you ever catch these people off-balance? "You must have talked to young Cumber. I was told he had a bit too much to drink last night. I am fond of the lad — I've known him since he was born, and his mother is very dear to me — but despite the advantage of his schooling, he has failed to learn much discretion."

"Begging your ladyship's pardon," Theo said, "but fuck discretion. Is it true? Do I have fairy blood?"

Lord Daffodil stirred, but Lady Aemilia only offered another regretful smile and nodded. "Yes. You are… one of us."

"One of you? Does that mean… I'm a Daffodil?"

The master of the house let out a snort. "By the shattered Cathedral, you certainly are not! There are no missing children in our house!"

"Please," said Lady Aemilia. "Forgive my brother. He does not mean to be rude, but we do take good care of our offspring, unlike some of the other houses. You have met my son Zirus, I'm told — does he seem like the child of a house that could lose a baby and not care?"

He seems like the child of a house that gives him too much money and too little responsibility, Theo thought but didn't say — he knew that kind of parenting wasn't confined to Fairyland. "Fine. So then where do I come from?"

"We don't know, Master Vilmos," said Lord Hollyhock. "What we do know is that certain of the other leading houses have been watching you for a long time. That something recently happened or is happening that has made their interest more personal and more intrusive. A… well, let us say a source of ours with access to those houses made it clear that they were about to change the arrangement — to do something more than simply observe you." He was watching Theo carefully, perhaps to see how closely he was following what was being said. "At that point, we decided to step in. Do you know much about what is going on here? About our factions?"

"Enough to know that it's confusing. But, yeah, Creepers, Chokeweeds, that stuff. Everybody fighting over whether to kick the mortals in the ass or not. It's been explained to me."

Hollyhock allowed himself a small grin. "I would have enjoyed hearing that explanation. So, if you know something of that, you will understand perhaps why we didn't feel we could allow our adversaries simply to do whatever they wanted. And why we became a bit curious about you."

"I still don't understand — why me? These are, what, the Hellebores and Thornapples we're talking about, right? What could they possibly need me for?"

"We don't know," Hollyhock admitted. "But no doubt they will be very upset to learn that you are with us."

"You're going to tell them?"

"He is cursedly full of questions," said Lord Daffodil. "Whatever his true nature, his mortal upbringing quickly comes to the fore." He didn't sound like he thought that was a good thing.

"Hang on, I thought you were one of the families that liked mortals."

Daffodil stared at him as if from a great height, which was actually more or less the case. "We Symbiotes don't feel that the mortals should be destroyed, but that the two races must find a way to coexist. That is hardly the same thing as liking them."

Theo sat back in his chair, weary and depressed. He might not be a human being but he felt like one and thought like one. It wasn't much fun constantly being told how much everyone hated his kind around here. "So, excuse the mortal rudeness, but I still want to know why you're going to tell these people who want to kill me that I'm here?"

"They don't actually seem to want to kill you," said Hollyhock, who at least seemed to be able to talk to Theo as though they were both of the same species. "That's part of the puzzle. We want to know why they've been chasing you just as much as you do. We're hoping that when they find you're here, they'll think we do know, and they'll either give up their plan or give it away."

"So, mine shaft parakeet or whatever that bird is — that's me. Be honest, that's what you mean, right? Let's find out if I'm really important by seeing if they try to kill me again."

"Even if they wanted to kill you," Lord Daffodil said, "they would not dare. Not as long as you are under my protection. That could bring about another Flower War, and nobody wants that, not even the most hotheaded of the Excisors like Hellebore."

Theo looked out of the window. Beyond the walls of Daffodil House the city stretched out as far as he could see, except for the great dark expanse of Ys, the lake or ocean or whatever it was, full of boats that looked like silver clipper ships. The worst of the clouds had rolled through and the skies had turned a clear if muted blue. Theo realized for the first time that although he'd seen modern trains and automobiles here, he'd seen no sign of airplanes. Was that because some of these people could fly by themselves? But the wealthiest, most powerful group had no wings, so that theory didn't hold. Could it have something to do with the way the topography changed, the thing with the train stations and all that? He was about to ask about it when Lord Hollyhock suddenly said, "This has been very difficult for you, Master Vilmos, hasn't it?"

He turned in surprise, assuming he was being mocked, but if the fairy lord was insincere he hid it well. "Yes," Theo said. "Yes, to tell the truth, it has. Dragged right out of my life into a world I didn't know existed, chased by monsters and a bunch of other imaginary creatures — imaginary to me, anyway. No offense. And now I'm told that I'm not actually a human at all, that my parents weren't my parents? Yeah, it's been a bit tough."

"Please believe that we were not to blame for most of those things," said Hollyhock. "That we have indeed tried to help you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I may be pissed off, but I'm also grateful, especially for Applecore. She saved my life." A memory suddenly returned. "That thing that first came after me in my world — do you know about that?"

"The undead thing?" asked Daffodil. "Doesn't make any sense, that. Why would Hellebore and that lot send something like that after him?"

"Perhaps because it could go after him in his own world, where they thought we wouldn't discover what was going on," said Lady Aemilia. "Yes, Master Vilmos, we know about it."

"Well, Count Tansy said that the thing was going to keep coming after me. I don't know when it's going to show up again, but I know that next time I may not have a convenient magic door to jump through. Tansy said you guys might be able to, I don't know, get that thing off my scent. Did he mention that?"

"I have not spoken to Tansy in days," said Hollyhock. "But I was furious that he sent you to the City without a proper escort. My nephew Dalian was supposed to accompany you, but he was murdered on Mistletoe Green the day before you were to be brought from your world to ours. I suspect Hellebore's people — it has the smell of something of theirs, the careful cruelty."

"They cut out his heart," said Theo.

Hollyhock looked at him sharply. "How do you know that? Only the family saw the body and knew what was done to him."

"I saw the heart. They sent it to Tansy in a silver box. I think it had, like, your house crest on it or something."

The dark-haired fairy lord shook his head. "It was sent to Tansy? Tansy has the heart? Why? It makes no sense."

Theo could only shrug.

"Enough of this," said Daffodil. "These are small matters. The crime against you was terrible, Malvus, but I do not believe Lord Hellebore himself had anything to do with it. There are factions in his household and allied houses, some of them quite wild…"

Lady Aemilia deftly cut in. "Whatever the case, it is time to move on to other matters — think of the summit conference. It begins this afternoon."

"Summit conference… ?" Theo had almost entirely forgotten what Cumber had told him the night before, but it was coming back.

"Yes, a meeting of the Six Families," said Lady Aemilia. "Where we will find out what the Hellebores and Thornapples think about you being our guest. They will be here, along with Lords Foxglove and Lily and their retinues, in a very short time."

"Hang on a second." Theo suddenly had extremely damp palms. "You're telling me that the people who tried to kill me or capture me or whatever… are coming here, to Daffodil House? Today?"

"We have asked for an Exigent Gathering, yes. There wasn't time to arrange use of another site because of the holiday," said Lady Aemilia. "Parliament is out of session and Lord Monkshood said he couldn't possibly provide sufficient security there on such short notice…"

"What is he asking?" demanded Lord Daffodil. "You, Vilmos, do you think you should have some say about when the Six Families, the masters of the realm, should meet with each other?"

"I think I should have some say about when I get trotted out for a bunch of people who seem to want me dead, and certainly want to see my friends and family back home wiped out, yes. Yes, I goddamn well do."

"Perhaps it need not be that way, Master Vilmos," said Hollyhock. "Lady Jonquil, do we need to involve him in a face-to-face confrontation?"

"No, probably not." She turned to Theo. "I will make an arrangement so you can watch the proceedings without having to be physically present. Would that satisfy you?" She said it nicely, but still managed to sound like she was soothing a child's tantrum. Theo, however, was not going to be drawn into the fairy nobility's stilted manners and old-world behavior.

"Yeah, maybe. If it's safe."

"Does the fool creature think someone is going to assault him in my house?" growled Lord Daffodil. For a fairy, he had turned a rather choleric shade of beige-pink. "Nonsense!"

Lord Hollyhock turned to Theo. "I would like a little conversation with you before the meeting, Master Vilmos. Have you had lunch? No? Then perhaps you will join me for a meal in the chambers Lord Daffodil and Lady Jonquil have been kind enough to provide me. Let my hosts and I just finish discussing a few things here. Would you wait for me outside?"

Theo nodded and stood. He still had a lot of unanswered questions, and so far the Hollyhock fellow was the only person who'd shown any signs of being willing to talk. As he walked out they fell silent behind him. He caught a reflection of them in the floor-to-ceiling window and saw that they were all staring at each other. Talking, it looked like, maybe even arguing, but without moving their mouths or making a sound.

The outer room seemed to be empty except for the warthog-thing sitting behind the desk. "Applecore?" Theo called.

"She went out," said the tusked creature. "She saw something on my security eyes." He gestured to the row of framed mirrors on the desktop. Theo leaned over to look. Each one appeared to contain a view of some part of the compound or the surrounding streets. "She's quite a sweet little nutcracker, that one," the warthog said. "Not exactly the sugarplum variety, but I like a little spice myself." His overfilled mouth pursed for a moment and his brow furrowed. "Listen, can I ask you a question? Don't want to cause no offense. Are the two of you… you know, are you two an item?"

"What is this?" Theo growled. "Why do people keep asking me that? Doesn't the fact that she's the size of a candy bar and I'm about a hundred times bigger than her tell you anything?"

The warthog's tiny eyes opened wide. "Say, where are you from? Must be the farthest island in Ys or something — the hogboon-docks, for sure. Haven't you ever heard of cosmetic surgery?"

"Cosmetic… ? You mean… ?" It was too bizarre. He didn't want to waste any more brainpower on the ins and outs of this cartoon world. "Look, did she say when she was coming back?"

"No. She just said to tell you she thought she'd seen someone you knew and she was checking it out."

"Someone she knew, it must have been."

The secretary shook his bristly head. "Hey, I know my job, pal. She said someone you knew. She even said the name — Rufus or Findus or something."

Theo thought for a moment. "Rufinus? But it couldn't have been him — he's dead."

"Then she was probably wrong." The creature settled back and crossed one broad, pants-stretching thigh over the other. "But she's still pretty cute. Sassy, too — the way I like 'em."

Theo was still trying to figure out what Applecore might have been talking about when Lord Hollyhock appeared and led him away to lunch.

23 THE SHADOW ON THE TOWER

The well-dressed brownie who brought lunch was so swiftly efficient that every time Theo saw him the brownie was in another part of the room, arranging the rolling tray, setting out drinks, adjusting the lighting and the blinds on the window with such nimbleness that it was hard to believe Hollyhock had sent his secretary and the rest of his staff away: the room seemed to be filled with other people. The last time Theo looked up, the dapper little fellow had vanished. Theo hadn't even heard the door open or close.

"I'm glad you joined me," said Hollyhock, leaning forward to peruse the tray. Outside the Audience Chamber he was almost informal. "Have some of the melon — it's only in season for another week or so." He speared a piece with a long two-tined fork. With the fruit in his mouth, he waved the fork in a strange little pattern; immediately the air in the room felt closer, tighter. Theo's ears popped as if he had just changed altitudes. "Just a small discretion-charm," Hollyhock explained. "I'm certain our hosts respect my privacy, but too much trust of even one's allies is not a healthy idea in these sad times." He smiled, but his eyes were intent. "I said I was displeased with Tansy for having sent you unescorted. I am also unhappy that the Daffodil clan have been so slapdash in their care of you."

"They took me in off the street," Theo said.

"They have given you no guidance, no warnings, nothing. It's regrettable, but the City is not a safe place these days for almost anyone, and certainly not for you. I heard that Lady Aemilia's son took you to a club right inside Hellebore House. Is that true?" When Theo nodded, he scowled. "Criminal. Like putting your purse down on the sidewalks of Goblintown and expecting it to be there when you return. You seem to have been incredibly lucky. Perhaps a little too lucky." He lifted his fork again, held it up as though it were a baton and he were about to conduct Theo in an aria from Madame Butterfly. "Do you mind?"

"Mind what?"

"If I give you a brief inspection." He saw the puzzled way Theo was looking at the fruit fork. "Ah. It's silver, you see — a good conductor. Not a perfect item, but good enough to save me going through my belongings to find my wand." When Theo did not object, Lord Hollyhock closed his eyes and began to move the fork in lazy circles. Three different times he stopped and extended his free hand to snap up something invisible as though he were catching mosquitoes.

"Just as I suspected," Hollyhock said when he had finished. "You were covered with them. But, to our fortune, they are all of the minor variety. I doubt it's anything deeper at work than the usual run of security policy at Hellebore House — they sprinkle them on everyone. You have a few on you from the Daisy commune as well, but they are days old and inert."

Theo suddenly felt itchy all over. "Some what? Covered with what?"

"Charms, I suppose you'd call them, although they're a bit more… manufactured than what that word generally connotes. Since you haven't any background in our sciences, as far as I know, it's a bit difficult to explain. Tiny surveillance devices."

"Bugs!"

Hollyhock smiled. "No, not living creatures at all. As I said, it's hard to explain…"

"Oh, for God's sake, I know what a surveillance device is." Theo took a breath — he didn't want to offend this man. "That's what we call things like that back on… back in my world. Bugs." A chill tightened his skin. "Hang on — you mean I've been wearing those things? That the people at Hellebore House not only know exactly where I am, they've been listening to me?"

Hollyhock shook his head like a kind father — No, son, you can never go down the drain in the bath. "I very much doubt it. These are minor charms, manufactured to attach themselves indiscriminately to anyone from outside Hellebore House who steps into their compound. Most of them weren't even working — disabled by Daffodil House's own counter-charms when you returned, no doubt. The three I've just destroyed have been sending something back, but it couldn't have been much, since they were badly damaged by Daffodil defenses. These are common practices in the City." He set the fork down. "But it is evidence that this is all not being taken seriously enough. Tansy, Daffodil, even Lady Aemilia, although she's sharper than most of them, are all treating this like it's a bit of interfamily espionage over who will win the Trooping Banner at the Old Hill Day Games."

Theo had been picking his way without much appetite through the fruit, bread, and cheese, although the melon was as good as advertised, with a curious minty, perfumed taste. In fact, everything on the tray was exotic and wonderful, but any urge to eat had now left him for good. "What exactly is 'this'?" he asked. "I keep hearing about a Flower War. Everybody says there's not going to be one, no one would dare start one, blah, blah, blah. That sounds to me like a divorce or somebody dying — whenever people talk that much about how something's not going to happen, it's usually because they're scared to death it will happen."

"Your mortal background does you credit," Hollyhock said. "You see more than many in this city. Yes, I agree — I think they're all being foolishly optimistic, but I think that secretly they know it. It is a common cliché to say that no one wants a Flower War, but the fact is that there have been three of them just in recent history, one of them a very short time ago, and for much the same reasons as far as I can tell — major disagreements among the ruling families."

"But what does it have to do with me?" Theo rubbed his face. He was beginning to feel the lack of sleep: it was getting harder to ignore the dull throb in his head from too much to drink the night before. "It's crazy."

"I suspect it has something to do with the rumors I've heard, the truly chilling rumors. They say that the Hellebores have raised a Terrible Child."

Theo shook his head. "I don't get it. They've got a bad kid?"

"No, no. A Terrible Child is not an ordinary child, not by any stretch. It is a… thing, in a sense. The product of a very old and now shunned science from an earlier era. A child who is not born of woman in the normal way, although I do not know much more about the process than that — it is a thing you only hear about in old stories, so if Hellebore has managed it, he has managed something significant, however evil."

"Evil?"

"A Terrible Child is a sort of living invocation, if what I understand about it is true. A gateway to the Old Night."

"Old Night. I have a feeling that's another one that means something really unpleasant."

"It is the primordial crawling chaos out of which all order arose. It can only be restrained, not destroyed." The fact that the fairy lord could say such a thing as though he were talking about the weather was what frightened Theo most. I'm stuck in a world where things like that are the plain truth. Magic is real here, even black magic. And I don't know shit about anything. "It has retreated now and touches the world only in a few shadowy spots," Hollyhock explained, "but out of those few places dreadful things erupt, madness and murder. To unleash Old Night in all its power would mean an entire era of blood and savagery and delusion, the twisting of everything known into its worst possible configurations."

Theo wished he hadn't eaten. He had a sour, nauseating taste in his mouth. He lifted the crystal goblet of water that the fairy lord had poured for him and drank like a man in the desert. "It sounds horrible," he said at last. "But I still don't know what it has to do with me. Besides, why would these Hellebores want to do something like that, anyway? I saw their place — they're rich and powerful. If they ruin Faerie they'll be ruining themselves, too, won't they?" He took another drink.

Hollyhock showed a grim smile. "I have no idea what any of it might have to do with you except that the coincidence seems too great to be ignored. But as to why the Hellebores would do such a thing, you have misunderstood me. They do not mean to unleash Old Night here. It is your world that they would plunge into an epoch of torment — or at least what was your world. The world of mortals."

It took Theo a while to finish coughing and wheezing. As he dabbed at his wet shirtfront with the napkins Hollyhock handed to him, he tried to make sense of it. "You're saying that… that these crazy bastards, the Hellebores and Thornapples… that they're planning to destroy my entire world?" He had absorbed the idea that Applecore's Chokeweeds — Excisors, as they seemed to like to call themselves — bore a grudge against humans and even might want them wiped out, but he had put it in the category of some kind of terrorist cell — the source of occasional acts of violence, perhaps, but not of an actual plan for total genocide.

"Unleashing Old Night would not destroy it so much as transform it out of all recognition," said Hollyhock. "But the results would still be horrible."

"But why do they want to do something like that?"

"I suspect it has something to do with power. You experienced the outage we had last night, I assume, or did you sleep through it?"

"Power? Not political power, but you mean like… electricity?"

Hollyhock looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. "Of course, that is the science of your world, isn't it? Here that word describes a discredited superstition of half a millennium past. Yes, the power that runs our society, lights our buildings, warms our rooms, and moves our vehicles. These outages — blackouts as some call them — have been getting more frequent and more serious. It is no coincidence, Master Vilmos, that the fiercest Excisor families are those that own the machineries of power production. For some reason, perhaps due to our rapid expansion and the growing demand, perhaps because of something more peculiar and less obvious, our science — and particularly those families — are having trouble meeting the power needs of our civilization.

"What is known about the problem is that there is a connection between the growth of what your world calls technology there and the shortages here — that advances in scientific progress in the mortal world somehow cause setbacks here that are growing increasingly painful. Many people feel that your world and ours make a closed system — that we need your ignorance to keep ourselves strong. If so, this is a bad time for Faerie in more than one way. Humanity is slowly abandoning its old beliefs, the beliefs that give power to our world, at the very same time that our civilization is exponentially expanding its need for that power."

The reference to the ignorance of mortals, even from this unusually well-disposed fairy, rankled a little, but it also reminded Theo of the deeper paradox that had been gnawing at him all day. They keep saying "you," and "your people," he thought, but that's the point, isn't it? I'm not a mortal at all, unless everyone here's lying to me… and that must have something to do with why I'm in the middle of this. But he had been raised to think of himself that way, and a lifetime's worth of self-image could not change in an instant — might not ever change. So how can I understand why these Excisors might want me when I can't think like they do?

"I'm trying to follow all this," he said. "Really trying. You think that somehow they want to bring on this Dark Night thing, and then people — mortal people — will be, like, plunged back into the Middle Ages and get superstitious all over again? Make it easy for you fairies to draw power from us?"

"Old Night. Perhaps that is what they want, yes. I confess I cannot see all the sides of the figure — it is a strange, complex plan, whatever it is, and one that has been years in the making — but it is the only thing that makes sense of what has happened."

"And that somehow they need this Terrible Child — and me, too?"

"Again, perhaps." Hollyhock sighed. "I am certain of only one thing — our opponents will not be contented merely to argue about it in the Parliament of Blooms in the ordinary way, or even at today's summit conference, as Daffodil and the other old guard seem to think. Neither will they be bluffed into giving up. Hellebore is a man of action. He relies on others to waste their time talking while he plunges ahead."

Theo had momentarily forgotten the conference. Now the idea that the masters of the Hellebore and Thornapple families were going to be right here, in this place, made him feel nakedly vulnerable. He stared at the rain-spotted window of Hollyhock's suite. A series of drops joined together, formed a vertical stream. When they reached a small leaf stuck to the pane they did not push it out of the way but flowed around it. What was it Dolly Ogre called me? Shallow. Like that rainwater. Just going with the flow, sliding away, changing direction — whatever's easiest. Is that what Cat meant, too?

Now here he sat, the World's Shallowest Man, in an utterly strange place with his very life at stake among these coldly selfish fairy-folk. He resolved to do better than he had done in the past. He also resolved for once to keep a resolution.

"What about you?" Theo asked suddenly. "Why are you so different? How do I know you don't have your own agenda?"

"Good question." Lord Hollyhock toyed with a piece of bread. "The answer is, I do have my own agenda, of course. But I'm one of the few whose agenda coincides with yours, Master Vilmos."

"Why is that? And why should I take your word for it?"

"I can only answer the second question by saying you shouldn't, but I'm afraid I can't offer you any proof. As to what we have in common, other than our basic essence, well, I am not really one of the old guard, although my family is a powerful one. My mother and father died during the last Flower War, so I have that reason to fear and distrust conflict between the families. Also, I am a radical of sorts, at least by comparison to most of the other house-lords. I do not believe we can trust the old patterns to hold things together, or that tradition is still the most important force in our society. We are a long-lived people and thus slow to change, but we do change. We must. And our society has not really been stable since the king and queen died — I suppose that will mean little to you, but it's true. Hellebore is another radical, but his ideas only benefit Nidrus Hellebore and people like him — a very small part of our folk. Not to mention what he would do to countless innocent mortals, against whom I have no grudge."

Theo's concentration had snagged on the idea of the death of the king and queen, which he had read about in his great-uncle's book — that it had been their passing which had forced (or was it allowed?) the seven ruling families to take power in the first place. Whichever the case, it was all becoming a bit much, too many facts, too many confusing new ideas, and no matter what his blood might say, his mind still told him that he was a mortal: he was far more concerned with protecting his own skin, whatever its genetic heritage, than continuing a crash course on the Royalty of Faerie.

"One more question," he said to Hollyock. "Were you the one who wanted me here? In… Faerie? And if that's true, why did you have Tansy do it instead of just doing it yourself?"

Hollyhock made a graceful gesture of surrender. "I drive the others mad because when I believe something is important, I treat it that way. So, yes, if pushing and pushing until Daffodil and Lily and the others gave in and agreed to have you brought here from your world means I am responsible, then the blame is mine." He smiled a little. "I hope in the long run you will have cause to thank me rather than hate me, but the future is still churning in the Well. We could have brought you directly here — to this very house, if we had chosen — but such an expenditure of power, and of such a singular and unusual focus, would have drawn attention, especially when we knew you were already being observed by Hellebore and his allies. Tansy is one of the few men outside the city who has the skill to effect a thing such as this. His experiments are well-known, but even the most suspicious of the ruling families consider him a largely harmless eccentric — he does not dabble much in real politics, although he talks about it a great deal — and so I thought if he were the one to contact you and attempt to bring you through, it might go unnoticed." He frowned. "Apparently I was wrong. In any case, I put a little pressure on him through his cousin, Lord Daisy, and he finally agreed."

"But not with everything you wanted."

"Certainly he did not fulfill his charge with the care I would have desired. Imagine, sending only a sprite after you!"

"She did pretty well," Theo said. "No, she did damn well."

"In any case, Tansy began to be fearful when he heard about my nephew Dalian's death." Hollyhock's frown returned. "I still don't understand why they sent his heart to the Daisy clan. But whatever the case, he was in a panic and wanted to back out of the whole thing. It required Daffodil and Lily and some of the others exerting the full weight of their authority to get him to agree to keep his bargain with us."

Theo sat back. He finally understood the change in Tansy's demeanor from irritation and what seemed like disinterest at first to an almost fawning kindness. It didn't explain everything, though. "So," he said after long silent seconds, "what's going to happen today? How do I really know Lord Dandelion and his pals won't sell me out to Hellebore? They sure don't think much of me."

"Lord Dandelion." He grinned. "That is amusingly apt — I will remember that for the Parliamentary Follies, if such a happy, ordinary thing should occur this year. As far as them somehow betraying you, don't worry too much, Master Vilmos. I may be a young troublemaker as far as they're concerned, but I head one of the ruling families and am not easily ignored, even by an old warhorse like Daffodil. Also, they are finally beginning to feel nervous about Hellebore's machinations, whatever they say. They have heard the rumors of the Terrible Child. They know that such a thing only comes about by the application of a hideous science, by the study and practice of many forbidden things. You are a pawn, but until we know more, an important one. They will not give you up as easily as you fear."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel a whole lot better."

Now Hollyhock laughed. He was quite likable for the master of a Flower house. Theo didn't know if that should make him suspicious or not. In any case, his suspicion-sensors were beginning to fatigue from overuse. "I've arranged for you to watch the whole thing from a safe part of the conference center," the fairy lord said. "You will not even be on the same floor of the building as Hellebore and his contingent. Come along, it's almost time for the show — I'll lead you to your seat."

Theo stood. "Is there a way I can find someone who's staying here? It's Applecore — the sprite who got me here. She went off a while ago and I'm beginning to get a bit worried about her."

"I will pass a message to the hob," said Hollyhock, leading him toward the door. "I am sure your friend will be found quickly. You are an important guest, after all, however it must sometimes seem."

It was at least a ten minute walk from the lobby of the Daffodil house-tower to the conference center, around the moat and along the edge of a memorial garden that seemed to be dedicated to the Daffodil clan's war dead, although which war was not specified; Theo was more than a little weary of fairy history and did not ask. He concentrated instead on enjoying the breeze and the muted afternoon sunshine, indulging his senses with what he would have thought of back in California as a typical autumn day. The air smelled of apples and something earthier, wet loam and leaves. The Daffodil House compound was huge and its grounds were carefully landscaped so as to look almost like wild forest and meadow: with his back to the four towers, the much lower conference center still hidden by hedges and old stone walls, Theo could almost forget where he was.

There were not many people on the paths for some reason. A work gang of wrinkly little men digging away in a drained ornamental lake stood up to watch them pass, then touched their foreheads and turned back quickly to their jobs when they recognized Lord Hollyhock. Farther on, a group of male sprites were painting the detail-work on top of one of the ornamental lampposts beside the path, three on a brush, buzzing and chattering. They swept down and made a couple of circuits around Theo and Hollyhock, swift as a storm of midges. Their greetings sounded more mocking than respectful, but his lordship paid no more attention to them than he had to the diggers.

The conference center was low compared to all the other buildings in the Daffodil complex, only four or five stories at its highest point, but that didn't make it small. It stretched over a large area inside the wall and had its own manicured gardens, less wild than the rest of the Daffodil grounds. It also seemed built in a more modern style, at least as far as Theo could tell: the outside walls were mostly glass or some Faerie equivalent, and the different buildings were connected by exterior catwalks and bridges, so that it looked a bit like a giant model of some unusually flat molecule.

Even with the fairy lord accompanying him, Theo spent a rather long time being pressed and poked by unsmiling ogre security guards before being allowed to pass through the wide front doors. Hollyhock led him across a lobby full of busy functionaries in a variety of exotic shapes and into an executive elevator.

"We could have walked up — it's only one floor — but you don't want all the folks gossiping on the stairs to see you," Hollyhock explained.

The "seat" Theo had been promised for the proceedings proved to be in a corner office suite, two floors beneath the main meeting hall. This room was probably only thirty or forty feet off the ground, but the view outside its windowed outer wall was so dense with the tops of trees it was impossible to say for certain. The suite was empty but for a long table, a few chairs and other pieces of furniture, and a large greenish personage wedged firmly into a desk just inside the door.

"I'll just leave you then, shall I?" said Hollyhock. "I've got a few things to attend to before the meeting begins."

"And I just stay here, right?"

"Oh, I should think so. If you need anything, Walter can help you." Hollyhock pointed to the thing behind the desk, then nodded and went out.

Walter was another large Appointment Beast, at least as ugly as the one Theo had met earlier. He was pudgier than the musclebound warthog, with skin like a crocodile and a round, scaly face. He silently directed Theo to the table in the center of the room, then flicked his fingers over the surface of his own desk as if trying to shake water off them; a large mirror rose from a previously invisible slot in the center of the table. Its reflecting surface appeared to steam over, then the mist vanished and was replaced by the Daffodil family crest which remained in the center of the mirror.

"The Test Patterns of Fairyland," Theo murmured.

"Beg pardon?" said reptilian Walter.

"Nothing."

The Appointment Beast nodded, slowly extricated itself from behind the desk, and brought Theo a pitcher of water and a glass.

"Do you mind if I eat my lunch?" Walter asked. "Seeing as I'm working today when I'm supposed to be on holiday?"

"Not at all."

The scaly head nodded. "Very kind." Walter took a white cardboard carton that might have contained Chinese take-out out from beneath the desk, opened it, and looked in. Flarp! A long gray tongue shot out and plunged into the box like a piston, then withdrew almost as quickly, bringing back something with tiny wriggling legs. Theo turned away, unsettled.

The mirror in the center of the table grew misty again and the Daffodil crest faded, replaced a moment later by a view of what Theo guessed must be the conference center's meeting hall a couple of floors above him. It was at least as large as the vast basement room that held the comb, and like the much smaller suite Theo was presently occupying, seemed to have one wall entirely made of glass. A long table bisected the hall, running perpendicular to the floor-to-ceiling window; Theo's viewpoint looked down its polished length. Banks of seats surrounded the table on either side — diplomacy as spectator sport. Outside, the towers of the city's greatest houses spiked the skyline like the unfolded components of a Swiss army knife, a group of silhouettes much quirkier than anything he would have seen back in the world of his birth.

Lord Daffodil and Lady Jonquil were already sitting on the side of the table visible to Theo's left, surrounded by various underlings. Lord Hollyhock had just taken his place, too, although he had a much smaller contingent which included some young fairy women in smart suits. Beyond them, nearest the floor-to-ceiling window, and clearly constituting another household, was a group centered around an extremely tall and slender fairy lord with long silvery tresses and sad but self-absorbed eyes; he looked even older than Lord Daffodil. This mournful presence was surrounded by a group of what might have been acolytes, young fairy men with identical haircuts wearing simple, loose garments that resembled religious robes.

"Who's that?" Theo asked, pointing at the silver-haired fairy.

The Appointment Beast looked up, cheeks bulging. He chewed a few times, delicately spat a shell into his napkin, then set the box down and leaned forward, squinting. "Ah. His Radiant Honor, Garvan, Lord Lily," he said. "Mad as a mudfly, that one."

Theo tried to remember what he had been told about the Lily household. Allies of the Daffodils and Hollyhocks was all he could remember.

So everyone here so far is on the same side, he thought, and it was literally true, because the side of the table to Theo's right was still entirely empty. No Hellebores yet, no Thornapples. That should have made him feel better, but it didn't. Waiting was worse than knowing, really. He surveyed the crowd of fairies filling the seats behind Hollyhock, Daffodil, and the rest. "Who are all the folk at the back?" he asked. "Some of them look pretty rich and important."

The lizard man leaned forward again. "The usual lot. The Primrose clan over there, they're another of the Six Families. A lot of the others are Lord Daffodil's allies. Those are Peonies, and Bluebells, and… I can't quite make those out in the back, but I saw the guest list so I'm fairly sure they're Snowdrops. Beyond them are… Stocks, yes, no question. Hard to tell which Stocks just by looking at them — huge family and they all look much the same — but you can't mistake the look. Weak chins, the lot of them."

"And the other side, the empty chairs, those are for the Hellebores and the Thornapples?"

The functionary briefly consulted a list on his clipboard. "Yes, and some others who asked to be seated with them. The Foxgloves, Larkspurs, and… let me check… Monkshoods, Buttercups…"

Foxglove. It tugged at Theo's memory, but his head was spinning with horticultural names, an overgrown garden of half-understood fairy civics and history.

"That lot will arrive late, no doubt," the scaly fellow continued. "With Hellebore and some others it will be a purposeful gesture of contempt. With Lord Larkspur, it will be because he has caught the wrong train from the country. He will spend ten minutes blaming the rail system."

Despite his nervousness, Theo was amused. "You seem to know a lot. What's your name?"

"Spunkie Walter, sir."

"Nice to meet you, Spunkie."

"No, my name is Walter. A spunkie is what I am. You met my cousin Spunkie Tim earlier."

"The warthog guy? Oh, sorry, is that rude?"

"People can think what they like." Walter shrugged at the ways of the world. "Some people think I look like a lizard."

"Imagine that."

The spunkie nodded. "Would you mind if I finished my lunch, sir? They said they might want me to bring you up later, so I'd just as soon eat now. I hardly get a chance to sit down around here, let alone eat."

"Of course." Now Theo was nervous again — very nervous. He didn't much like the idea of being brought up later, or at all. He did his best to calm himself, watching the fairy lords preparing for the conference. Well, one side was preparing. The other still hadn't made an appearance. Spunkie Walter had called it a gesture of contempt. Or, Theo couldn't help thinking, maybe it's something much worse. Maybe they're going to attack Daffodil House and try to kidnap me or something. But it was hard to believe that, hard to attach that much significance to himself, no matter what Hollyhock had said, let alone believe that any of the other fairy houses were desperate enough to attack the Daffodil clan here in the heart of their power, behind their mighty fortifications. Still…

"Hey, Walter? Does Lord Daffodil have… I don't know what you call it here. A standing army? A personal security force?"

Walter slurped down another wiggling something. "Yes, sir," he said glumly. "Over a thousand of them. They have their barracks in the outwall. And there are always a hundred stationed in the main tower. After the last Flower War, nobody gets too trusting around here."

"Thanks." Theo suddenly felt much better. And there must be magic too — lots of magic, all the charms and things Hollyhock had mentioned. These rival houses must be like the US and USSR during the Cold War — opposing forces too well balanced to start anything for fear that even the aggressor might not survive. No, it was leaving this armed fortress that he needed to avoid. His stupidity in letting Zirus Jonquil take him right to his enemy's doorstop was really beginning to rankle. Come on, Theo. You can't be shallow anymore. You can't just go along. That will get you killed… !

Lord Daffodil was standing now, talking down the table to some of the others on his side, but Theo couldn't hear a sound. "Is there a way that I can hear what they're saying?"

"Say, 'To my ears,' " Walter instructed him.

Theo did; a moment later Daffodil's voice was in Theo's head, full of well-bred irritation that his counterparts from the other families had not yet arrived. It was not an external sound like the sort you got from speakers, however good: the fairy lord's voice was right in his head. It was such a strange and fascinating effect that Theo almost didn't look around when the door to the office opened.

The ruling class were still similar enough to Theo's eyes that it took him a few seconds to recognize the fairy standing in the doorway. The handsome, bespectacled figure nodded to Theo, then turned to the lizard-secretary and said, "Do you recognize me?"

"Of course, Count Tansy."

"Good. I have a message for you from Lord Daffodil." He passed the spunkie a piece of paper. Walter looked at it; a frown crossed his scaly face.

"It should come through the hob."

"It was not given to the hob, it was given to me. I was just with your lord a few moments ago."

"Then I must go at once," Walter said, rising. "There is a drinks cabinet on the far wall, Count Tansy. Please forgive me if I leave you to serve yourself. This appears to be urgent."

Theo had been staring. "Tansy. I didn't expect to see you here."

The other smiled a little. "I cannot say the same — I have heard a great deal about you lately. I gather you have had many near misses and close escapes, but it seems you have been lucky. Still, I am very displeased that Applecore brought you here, against my orders."

"Yeah, that's right, you wanted me to go to… to…" The recalcitrant memory escaped for good, replaced by another thought. The din from the conference room had diminished when he gave his attention to Count Tansy, but it had not gone away, and it added to the confusion in Theo's head. "Hang on, it must have been you!"

Tansy, who had been approaching the table, stopped suddenly. "What does that mean?"

"Applecore left me a message — said she saw someone I knew outside Daffodil House. I thought from what the secretary said that she meant she'd seen Rufinus — but he's dead."

"Yes, he most certainly is, the poor fool." Tansy slid into the seat beside Theo.

"Nice relative you are," Theo said. "But she must have meant you. I haven't been able to track her down — did you see her?"

Tansy shook his head. "I have not, and I doubt it was me she saw, since I came not in my regular coach but a jitney from the station. My presence here is not generally known, you see." He looked at the view of the main meeting room. "I see that Hellebore and the others have not arrived."

"Yeah, Walter the spunkie said they'll come late, all of them, the Thornapples and the Larkspurs and the… Foxgloves, too…" He was suddenly as cold as if fever-chilled. "Oh my God. That's who you tried to send me to, wasn't it? Foxglove?"

"Foxglove? I might have." Tansy spoke in a distracted way. He was watching the mirror intently. "What of it? It has only been widely reported in the last few days that he has thrown in his lot with Hellebore's people."

Theo's heart was hammering. "Hollyhock couldn't figure out why you sent me to the City with so little protection. But that wasn't a mistake, was it? You… you sold me out."

"Sold you out? What nonsense is that? I have done my best to help you, you rude, ungrateful creature…" Tansy paused. "Look, Hellebore has arrived."

Theo's eyes flicked to the mirror, but everything looked much the same — one side of the vast conference table crowded, the other side empty. Lady Aemilia was suggesting that there was much to be discussed even without all the six leading families represented, and her words distracted Theo for what was almost a fatal second. He saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned just as Tansy tried to clamp a piece of cloth across his mouth. One smell of it, an acrid, moldy scent like something that had been growing a long time under dark wet ground, was enough to make him fling himself backward. Tansy had not had a chance to get his other arm around Theo's neck. He managed to break free and tumble off the chair and onto the floor, but it felt like some of the fumes were inside his body now, turning his muscles to rubber.

Idiot! He scrabbled away from the table, trying to get control of his limbs so he could stand. I'm an idiot for not seeing it coming! He sent Walter away! He sold me out and now he's here to finish the job!

Tansy was on him in a moment, grabbing him with slender but still astonishingly strong arms. As if in alliance with his attacker, the voices from the conference room grew louder in Theo's head as he struggled to keep Tansy's cloth away from his face.

"We are being treated outrageously. You know I do not like leaving my mountain for anything except the most important business, especially on a sacred day that should be spent with my family and folk…"

"Please, be patient, Garvan."

"I have been patient, Lady Aemilia. My meditations have been disrupted, I have been forced to travel out of season through all the field of Holly Crown trying to find a station, and now this!"

"You have every right to be upset, my good Lily…"

"And that is enough from you, Hollyhock. You are only a pup, and if you think I will stay here and be insulted by that Hellebore and his jumped-up set simply to further your political ambitions…"

"Wait! I am being given a message…"

"What is it, Brother?"

"Just a moment, Aemilia, the hob is saying… it makes no sense…"

Theo's battle, in terrible counterpoint, was almost completely silent. He rolled toward the table with his enemy straddling him, hoping to knock the fairy's head against the furniture and dislodge him, but Tansy saw his plan and managed to get one foot against the table leg as he again forced the cloth into Theo's face. Theo held his breath, but he was already exhausted and needed air: he knew he could not last much longer. He tried to remember the fights he'd been in, but the only things he could recall were either getting hurt or making a run for it at the first distraction.

The slender, pale hand was pushing the cloth down on him despite his strongest efforts to keep it away. In another moment he wouldn't be able to get any air at all and the struggle would be over. Theo hesitated, knowing he would only get one chance, then forced himself to stop resisting and go limp. He had managed to take only a small breath before surrendering and prayed that the cloth wasn't something magical, that it only worked if you inhaled the fumes. He made himself lie still and hold that tiny, insufficient breath against the screaming of his instincts as the reeking fabric closed over his mouth and nose.

"I have him," Tansy announced, apparently to the air. "I will be out of this place in moments. You may proceed."

Under the cloth, Theo's eyes were stinging so badly he thought he might be blinded, but that was the least of his worries. He had to wait, lungs burning until his every fiber shrieked at him to fight for breath no matter what, and then wait seconds longer, until he felt Tansy's hand loosen the pressure and the fairy's weight shift a little on Theo's chest. As soon as the rag came off he twisted his head and got his teeth into the side of Tansy's hand, then bit down as hard as he could. The fairy shrieked in startled pain and the cloth dropped from his fingers. Theo yanked back his head, gasped in air, and heaved himself upward with what felt like his dying strength, lifting Tansy off the ground with him before throwing himself backward into an explosion of blackness.

The blackness did not go away swiftly. For a long time, minutes and minutes, Theo could only lie helplessly on the floor of the office, wondering whether he had hit his own head while smashing Tansy against the table, or if the poison on Tansy's cloth really had made him blind. At least he couldn't hear anything else moving, either: Tansy had not scrambled up to finish him, although Theo could feel the weight of the count's arm across his chest. When vision and control over his limbs finally returned, Theo shook the fairy off, turned over, and stared blearily down at him.

Tansy was not dead, but he had hit his head very hard and his eyes were rolled back under their lids. He quivered like a rabbit Theo had once seen, shot by a friend's pellet gun. Theo crawled across the floor and picked up the cloth, then brought it back and shoved it against Tansy's bloody face. The fairy's trembling became less, then stopped.

I hope he's fucking dead, Theo thought, but he doubted the drugged cloth was meant to work that way. It was a lot of trouble for everyone to go through just to kill him, like on the train. Kidnapping seemed a more likely intent.

He got the upper half of his body onto a chair, then managed to pull himself up until he was standing, swaying beside the table. The voices in his head had grown quieter again, but he could still see the people in the huge meeting room. He wondered who he could call. He had to tell someone — Hollyhock needed to know what was going on.

"Hob?" he called up toward the ceiling. Nobody answered.

"I am afraid I must stand with Lord Lily," Daffodil was saying angrily. "This is more than irregular — sending this mandragorum is a calculated slap."

The Hellebore side of the conference table was no longer empty. A single figure dressed in a black robe now stood there, facing Daffodil and the others. What Theo could see of the face was so pale that at first he thought it was one of the hollow-men. When it pulled back its hood, he saw that the features were bizarrely unformed, two completely dead eyes, a lump of nose, a slit of a mouth, the whole thing as lifeless as an uncooked gingerbread man. It reached into its robe and guards leaped forward from all around the room; in an instant the barrels of several dozen weapons were pointed at the unfinished thing, but it continued in its slow, clumsily deliberate way.

Theo could only stare at the mirror and watch it all unfold, brainsick, exhausted, and confused.

"Don't fire," Lord Daffodil said loudly. "No weapons known to science could have gotten past our detection charms. The mandragorum went through five checkpoints before it was allowed in here."

The pulpy white hands emerged, each holding a golden rod. Despite Lord Daffodil's words there was a flurry of humming and clicking noises as those guards who had not already cocked their weapons did so, but the pale thing only spread its two arms, holding the rods out vertically at the extent of its reach. A flicker of light passed between them, then the space between the rods was filled with the image of a coldly handsome, dark-bearded face.

"Hellebore!" said Daffodil in outrage. "What are these mummer's tricks? Why are you not here? Why do you send this poor manufactured creature in your place, this… walking root? Are you afraid to meet with your equals?"

A smile spread across the face in the shining image. "My equals are here with me." The image stayed the same size, but the field of view widened until the men sitting on either side of him could be seen, one dark as Hellebore, but with white eyebrows, the other with fair hair and beard. "You know Thornapple and Foxglove, I think." Thornapple only smiled — and except for the eyebrows and that unpleasant smile, Theo realized, he was disturbingly like his daughter Poppy — but the other fairy lord's mouth was a tight line. Even through the ache in his head, Theo thought Lord Foxglove looked ashamed and maybe a little frightened.

What the hell am I doing watching this? It's not a damn TV show — they just tried to kill me! I have to get out of here, tell someone… But it was all he could do at the moment to stand upright and stare. Hellebore was dominating the picture again, his pale, amused face so handsome as to verge on pretty were it not for something horrifying about his eyes: even through the medium of the screen and the mirror through which he was watching from a distance, the man's coal-black stare held Theo like a candle flame in a dark room.

"So is this it?" Hollyhock was asking. He alone seemed to have grasped what was going on. Daffodil and Lily and many others were still bellowing outrage at this breach of protocol. "Do you no longer feel yourself safe in our houses, despite all our ages-old traditions of guesting? Does that mean it is to be war?"

Hellebore laughed. "Let us say that I would not feel safe in that house, no. As to war, yes, my young lord, it is. And more than that. The game has not merely begun, it is over."

Despite Hellebore's face on its magic screen in the middle of the mirror, Theo felt his attention drawn upward, to the transparent wall that ran all across the side of the conference center meeting room. Others in the great room had seen it too: a small shape coming through the sky toward Daffodil House, moving very fast, a black, wide-winged silhouette swooping down out of the sun.

Lord Daffodil was up on his feet, shaking his fist, but his face was as bloodless as the inhuman thing that held out Hellebore's screen — the face of a man who sees his own death on the wind. "But it cannot be! You could not have made such a flying device! All our laws forbid it! We would have known if you had worked the science to build such a thing… !"

The thing was coming straight toward them like a kite being reeled in. Now Theo could see its shape, the scalloped wings, the thread of whiplike tail. People in the meeting room were shrieking, fighting with each other, stumbling over chairs, falling.

"You're right, my lord," said Hellebore. "So we have returned to an earlier science, one our people had almost forgotten. Why build something that flies and flames and kills… when we had only to wake one up?"

It was over the center of the city. Theo gaped. It was huge — he had not realized how fast it was moving because he had not dreamed how big it was, long as a football field from snarling mouth to the tip of its snakelike tail.

Lord Lily was staggering, held up by two of his acolytes. "You have wakened a dragon? Then you are cursed! Cursed!"

A high-pitched hob-voice began to shriek, both in the Audience Chamber and in Theo's head: "Danger! Attack! Danger! Attack! Danger!"

"Cursed? Perhaps," said Hellebore evenly. "But you are dead. Which fate would you prefer?"

The black shadow covered the window, plunging the room for a timeless second into something deeper than twilight. Light smoldered in every crevice of the vast shape, the black scales surrounded by glowing red like stones floating in molten lava. Then the mouth gaped open in a hellish flare of incandescence and a six hundred foot span of wings spread wide to slow the thing as the great serpentine neck snapped forward, vomiting fire.

The huge window of the meeting room blew inward, an explosion of burning liquid glass — for an instant Theo could see the inhabitants flung before the spray, withering to black bone and ash — then the mirror went dark. The entire building spasmed beneath his feet and a blast of thunder like God's own hammerblow threw him to the floor and smashed the ceiling in above his head, raining pieces down on him like the stones of shattered Jericho.