Finally Gertrude nodded. “Thank you, little friend. Keep watch still, and warn us when they draw near.”
The nightingale launched itself into the air, flew to an opening in the wall Lune had not attended to before, and vanished.
Rosamund turned once more to Lune. “They are searching for you, my lady. A half-dozen soldiers, and that horrible mountain Halgresta. They cannot know you are here, I think, but they always suspect us when someone’s in trouble. Never fear, though; we are good at turning their suspicions aside.”
“But it also seems,” Gertrude added, “that we have a visitor skulking around our rosebush. Tell me, are they aware of that nice young man you were with at the mortal court?”
“Nice young…” Lune’s heart stuttered. “Yes, they are.”
Gertrude nodded decisively. “Then we must take care of him, too.”
LONDON AND ISLINGTON: April 25, 1590
Delay had cost him any hope of keeping the silver-haired creature in sight. But she left a traiclass="underline" raven feathers, shed from her gown as she fled.
Deven followed them through the cramped and twisted streets of London. The woman eschewed Watling Street, Old Change, Cheapside, instead making her way northwest by back lanes, until he found a feather beneath the arch of Aldersgate itself.
The gate should have been shut for the night, but the heavy doors hung open, the guards there blinking and disoriented.
The trail led north. Mounted now, Deven should have lost sight of the black feathers in the night, but their faint glimmer drew his eye. By the time he reached Islington, he had a fistful of the things, iridescent and strange.
The last feather he found impaled on the thorn of a rosebush behind the Angel Inn.
Light showed here and there along the inn’s back wall, and he knew they would still welcome a traveler at the front. But the woman could not have gone that way—
Unless, his mind whispered uneasily, she put on Anne’s face again.
The feathers rustled in his fist. Despite himself, Deven paced around the rosebush, as if he would find some other sign. The thorned branches stood mute.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose. Deven glanced up at the sky, but it stood clear from one horizon to the next, with not a cloud in sight. Why, then, did he feel a thunderstorm approaching? He drew his blade again, just for the comfort of steel, but it did him little good. Something was coming, and every nerve screamed at him to run.
“Master Deven! This way, quickly!”
He spun and saw a woman beckoning from a doorway that glowed with warm, comforting light. He was on the staircase before he realized the doorway stood in the rosebush, in the comfortable tavern before he considered that he had just passed underground, through the opening in the floor before he asked himself, Who is this woman? And why did you just follow her?
“There,” a northern accent said with satisfaction, from somewhere in the vicinity of his belt. “I wouldn’t normally resort to charms, but we couldn’t rightly stand there and argue. My apologies, Master Deven.”
The sword trembled in his hand.
The woman who had lured him below was joined by a second, just as short, and alike as only a sister could be. They wore tidy little dresses covered with clean, embroidered aprons, and their apple-cheeked faces spoke of friendliness and trust — but they came only to his belt, and were no more human than the figure silhouetted in front of the fire, her hair shining like silver washed with gold.
“Michael,” she breathed.
He retreated a step, risked a glance over his shoulder, saw that the floor had grown shut behind him. Leveling his swordpoint at the three of them, Deven said, “Come no closer.”
“Truly,” one of the little women said, the one with roses embroidered on her apron, “there’s no need for that. We brought you below, Master Deven, because there are some rather unpleasant people coming this way, and you will be safer down here. I promise, we mean no harm.”
“How in God’s name am I supposed to believe that?”
All three cringed, and one of the women gave a muffled squeak — the one with the daisies on her apron. “Now, now,” the rose woman said, a trifle more severely. “That isn’t very gentlemanly of you. Not to mention that we shouldn’t like to see our house pop up out of the ground without so much as a by-your-leave, or an apology to the folk above. We are fae, Master Deven; surely you must know what that means.”
Ominous thudding answered before he could; all four of them looked up. “They’re at the rosebush,” the daisy woman said, and then a snarl reverberated through the chamber, deep and hard, like thunder in an ugly storm.
“Open, in the name of the Queen.”
The two short ones exchanged glances. “I am the better liar,” the daisy woman said, and the rose woman answered, “but they will be suspicious if they do not see us both.” She fixed Deven with a stare that was no less effective for coming from a creature so small. “You will put up your sword, good master, and refrain from invoking certain names while in our house. We are protecting you from what’s above, which is good for both you and us. Once we have gotten rid of these nuisances, we shall answer any question you have.”
“As many as we know the answers to,” the daisy woman corrected her. “Come, we must hurry.”
Upon which the two of them whisked off their aprons, mussed their hair, yawned theatrically, and hurried up the stairs, looking for all the world as if they had just been roused from bed.
The floor stretched open to let them pass, then shut again, like a cellar without a door.
Deven said, half to himself, “What…”
“Hush,” the silver-haired creature hissed. She had not spoken since uttering his name, and now her attention was not more than half on him; she still looked upward, listening as heavy boots clomped across the floor.
“Where is she?” The voice he had heard before. It made Deven feel as if his bones were grinding together.
“I beg your pardon, Dame Halgresta—” The words were punctuated by a yawn. “We had just retired for the night. Would you like some mead?”
A clanking splash, as of a metal tankard being knocked to the floor. “I would not. Tell me where she is.”
The other sister: “Who?”
“-Lady—” The deep voice cut off in a noise something between a growl and a laugh. “Lady no more. The bitch Lune.”
Deven glanced across the hidden room at his involuntary companion. The silver-haired woman shivered unconsciously, her hands rising to cup her elbows. Upstairs, the two sisters parried the stranger’s questions with a masterful blend of innocence, confusion, and well-timed misdirection. No, they had not seen the lady — beg pardon, the woman Lune. Aye, of course they would say if they had; were they not the Queen’s loyal subjects? No, they had not seen her in some time — very rarely at all, since she went to the mortal court.
At that, finally, the fae woman looked across the room at him. Her eyes shone unmistakably silver, no common gray… but the set of them was familiar, from many a fond study.
Neither of them dared speak, with danger so near above. Instead they stared at each other, until the fae woman — Lune — broke and turned away.
He had not listened to the rest of the conversation above. More heavy footsteps, lighter voices trying to press the departing visitor to take some sweetmeats, or ale for the ride back to the city. Then silence, and the feeling of oppression lifted.
Deven decided to risk it. Crossing the floor, he approached Lune as closely as he dared, and in a voice pitched to carry no further than her ears, he said, “What has become of Anne Montrose?”