Silver's Edge. Anne Kelleher

his self was consumed on the spot before them all by a greedy goblin who grinned as he raised the lifeless corpse to his slavering maw. “No!” Artimour had heard himself roar, and with a mighty sweep of his broadsword, he’d beheaded the goblin where he stood. But there was no saving Lothalian.

      And now, possibly three more lost to Faerie forever? Winter was coming soon, when the landscape grayed, and the goblins’ natural color gave them an added advantage. He felt a grim and growing certainty that something worse than was predicted lay in store. He scanned the dispatch again. Finuviel had sent it three days previously. They were still seven days out. Riding hard, and alone, he could intercept them probably within two, maybe make it to Court in three. Or he could go directly to Court, and send another messenger to intercept Finuviel.

      He’d hear for himself the mortal’s story, and then be off. As if on cue, the door opened, and Dariel stood aside to let the mortal woman pass. Artimour looked up, scrutinizing the first mortal he’d ever seen with an interest far more intense than he would have cared to admit. Dariel followed her into the room, carrying on an inlaid serving tray a basket of bread, fresh from the ovens, a pot of warm yellow cheese, and a pitcher of foaming milk beside two crystal goblets. The squire set the tray on a corner of his desk. He poured the milk into the goblets.

      “Thank you, Dariel. You can leave us.” He motioned the squire to shut the door, and stared at the girl who stood before his desk, with raised chin and squared shoulders, proud as any princess, and grubbier than the meanest garden gremlin that had ever worked in the Palace gardens. Long, black curls tangled around her face, haphazardly tied back with a rough ribbon of indeterminate color. Her simple tunic was made of undyed homespun. The front of the tunic was stained with soot and sweat and suspicious smears that stank of goblin. It fell just below her exposed knees, revealing bare legs covered by the slightest shadow of fine dark hair. Her boots were made of leather so crudely cut and sewn he wondered how she could walk in them. She wore a cloak that had as much style as if she’d pinned a tent around her broad shoulders, and a belt barely worthy of the name, a rude scrap of leather buckled around her thick waist. Her face was just as dirty as her hands, which were black to the nails. Her cheeks were streaked with grime, but it was her eyes, her eyes that burned like two dark coals, that arrested him. There was such mettle, such passion in those eyes that something deep inside him responded immediately. His sidhe half recognized it as the potent lure of the mortal, the magnetism that sucked his kind into a vortex of need for the rush of raw energy said to emanate like a tangible thing from every human. He drew a deep breath as those dark eyes seared his skin. He could feel desperation rising from her pores like a hot mist.

      But even as part of him responded, another part recoiled, disgusted by the dirt that seemed embedded into her skin, by the sharp odor of stale sweat, by the lank strands of greasy hair. No wonder his mother’s people regarded his father’s as something to be toyed with, or, better yet, avoided altogether. No wonder Timias was mocked and scorned for being mortal-mooned, as they called it. It looked as if these creatures lived little better than their own animals.

      Suddenly Artimour was angry, angrier than he could ever remember being. It appalled him to think that three of his comrades—creatures of grace and light and beauty all—might have died for such an appallingly filthy clod of mortal flesh that had the audacity to live and breathe and stand before him as though her dirty little life might be worth even half one of theirs. “They tell me three scouts are missing.” He spoke quietly, evenly, but the accusation was clear. “At dawn, the goblins should have returned to their lairs, weakened by the rising sun. But your human scent drew them on, and into the patrol who should have been safe in their barracks. But for you.”

      She cast down her eyes, her hands laced together like a lump in her lap. “I did not mean to make trouble or cause you grief.”

      He pressed his lips together. What in mortal experience could compare to the death of a sidhe at the hand of a goblin? He thought about what he knew of mortals. They were born, they dashed through their helter-skelter lives, breeding faster than rats, and then died, burned out like cinders, their bodies turned to ash. In between, they tempted hapless sidhe foolish enough to bother with them. “Cause me grief?” He shook his head, spitting out the words like cherry pits. “You’ve no idea what you’ve caused or what’s been lost.” He looked away, overcome by scorn and disgust and the weight of the potential loss of not just one comrade to the true death, but four.

      When she spoke, her words shocked him speechless. “You’re part mortal, aren’t you?”

      He gripped the arms of his chair, stunned into forgetting his grief, for he had always been reassured by everyone how remarkable it was he bore no human stamp upon his face. If anything, from the time he could remember, everyone went to extravagant lengths to agree that his eyes were like Vinaver’s, his seat upon a horse like Gloriana’s, his dance step, Alemandine’s. And since Finuviel was born, his hair and skin color were compared most favorably to those of his cousin, as the sidhe referred to every kin relationship which was not parent and child, or consort and mate. “Maiden,” he nearly choked. “How did you know?”

      “You aren’t like the others—not exactly.” But her attention had already drifted, her eyes ranging around the room, from ceiling to floor, lingering over the wall-hangings, the scrolls and the weapons. She looked at the food and he saw her throat work as she swallowed.

      In what way? he wanted to demand, but her attention was riveted on the intricate patterns in the carpet. Judging by her clothing and the state of her person, the outpost must appear as sumptuous as a palace. He gestured to the food. “Are you hungry?”

      She shook her head slowly. “I dare not—don’t you know? To eat or drink of the food of the OtherWorld—it’s dangerous to us—there’s an enchantment in the food—” She broke off, her attention caught by some aspect of the weapons hanging on the long walls above the bookshelves. “I brought some food with me, but I dropped it in the forest when the goblin was chasing me.”

      “I see.” Better get on with it, then, he thought. At least she had a compelling reason to go back to her own world quickly. The sooner she returned to her world, the sooner he could be on his way. “They tell me you wish to see our Queen.”

      Without leave, she sank down onto the edge of the chair in front of his desk. He heard the soft rasp of her rough fingertips caressing the supple leather on the arms, as once more she fixed him with that piercing look, which rendered him wholly incapable of reprimanding her. “I need to see the Queen. I need her help. My father’s missing. And we—the people of my village—we found the goblin floating dead in the lake. The sidhe who found me here told me there is a similar lake in this world. I believe my father killed the goblin and fell somehow into Faerie. I’ve come to find him.”

      Artimour placed the tips of his fingers together carefully. If her father had foundered into the Wastelands he was as good as dead. But she was looking at him with such mute appeal, such naked need, his own heart twisted in his chest and he knew he had to convince her to leave. Her very presence was too unsettling, too distracting, too intoxicating. And the way this one looked at him with her pleading eyes that burned like tiny twin flames in her sweat-streaked face and her desperate need to find her father—this one was rousing memories and feelings and questions he’d thought long buried and forgotten.

      Where’s my father? he had asked his mother, one evening when Gloriana had favored his nursery with a visit, for he had just learned that such things existed and that most had one. And she had laughed, softly, touching his cheek with a caress as light as a rose petal. “Don’t worry about your father, child,” she answered. “He’s gone to a place you can never go.” Why has he gone there? he’d asked. “He has returned to his people, who need him,” she replied. But why did he leave me? He was desperately curious as to the identity of the faceless person few ever spoke of. “Because,” his mother answered gently, “you belong to me.” And that was the end of the only conversation he could remember having with his mother concerning his father. Even the Lorespinners generally considered the mortal’s contribution to the making of the Silver Caul scarcely worthy of mention, let alone detail.

      He rubbed at his head as if erasing the memory, pushing all the questions