“Healing?” She was taken aback. “But you did it so easily… I thought that healing spells were the very hardest magics to perform.” Or at least, that was what Valerian had told her, and surely the Oak’s Healer ought to know about such things.
Rob shrugged. “For you they would be, no doubt. Just as the glamours that you and Veronica create would be all but impossible to a male such as myself. But you should know that without me telling you. Sit down.”
Linden tensed. Was he going to put her to sleep the way he had Timothy?
“Or not, if you prefer,” Rob said with a touch of exasperation. “But it will be difficult for me to heal your foot if you insist on standing on it.”
Embarrassed, Linden sidled over and sat down on the end of the bed where Timothy slept, lifting her bandaged foot for Rob’s inspection. The male faery knelt and cupped her heel in one hand, deftly unwinding the bandage with the other. He considered her injury a moment, then laid his fingers against the wound and said, “Done.”
She could feel a tingling warmth where his hands rested, but no pain. Wondering, Linden pulled her foot back and turned it over. There was no sign of blood or bruising, only a tiny white scar.
“And now,” said Rob, “you are in my debt twice over.”
“I am,” Linden admitted, coloring at the directness of his gaze. “What would you ask of me in return?”
“Knowledge, no more. But I warn you, I have a great many questions-and if you lie to me, I will know.”
His tone was mild, but the warning in it was unmistakable. Linden took a deep breath. “I accept your bargain.”
“Why did you save the human boy from Veronica?”
An odd question, considering he’d just rescued the two of them from Veronica himself. “She was going to take his music. What else could I have done?”
Rob stooped and lifted Timothy’s guitar from its case. He ducked his head under the strap, sat down in the room’s only chair, and began to play, fingers wandering over the strings. “You could have taken his music for yourself,” he said. “Or let Veronica take it, and escaped from Sanctuary unharmed. Instead you defied the Empress’s decree, and risked your own life, to rescue him. Why?”
Linden sat back a little, moving carefully so as not to disturb the sleeping Timothy. “I never even thought of doing anything else,” she admitted. “I mean…his music means so much to him. And what Veronica was doing-tried to do-was wrong.”
Rob’s left hand slid down the guitar’s neck, his right plucking soft chords as he spoke. “Wrong?” he said. “How so? He would never have known what she took from him, or remembered how it was done. When he awoke, he would only find that his skill at making music was not what it had been, and in time he would give it up and move on. Where is the harm?”
“But it’s stealing,” protested Linden, shocked. “You don’t take from people without giving them something in return.”
“People?” said Rob. “Faeries, perhaps. But humans? What do we owe them? They have abilities we lack and envy, but they would say the same of us. We could kill them or herd them like cattle if we chose, but instead we allow most of them to live without even suspecting our existence. Having granted the humans so great a favor already, why should we give them more? It is not as though they are our equals.”
He spoke without hesitation, but his tone was colorless, as though he were reciting a speech he had given too many times. Still, hearing him say those words made Linden feel queasy.
“Like cattle…” she echoed, and then with sudden passion, “No. No, I don’t believe that. The Great Gardener-”
She stopped, unsure. Did these city faeries even believe as she did? Or were they like Timothy, certain of nothing but doubt?
“Go on,” said Rob.
“When the Great Gardener planted the world,” Linden went on carefully, trying to remember the story just as Queen Amaryllis had told it to her years ago, “the humans were appointed to rule it and tend it and look after all the other creatures. And the first faery, Lily-she was supposed to help them by watching over the garden and letting them know when the plants or animals needed care.
“The Great Gardener promised Lily that if she did her work faithfully, she would in time receive a mate of her own. But as the days passed, Lily grew impatient. She left the humans and flew off to see if there were any others like herself, and when she returned, the garden was in chaos and the humans were gone. So the Great Gardener punished her by taking away her creativity.”
“That hardly seems fair,” said Rob dryly. “What about the humans?”
“I don’t know their part of the story,” admitted Linden. “But I’m sure they were punished too. The point is, humans and faeries were meant to work together. We need each other.”
Rob gave her a pitying look. “A child’s tale,” he said, “left over from a time when our people were too ignorant to know better. I would not be surprised to find that the humans made it up themselves, to keep us in our place. But you are a young woman now, and surely, you are too intelligent to believe such fables?”
Linden was flustered. To be treated as an adult was flattering, even more so when the speaker was a male of her own kind. And to be called intelligent pleased her as well. But the contempt in Rob’s voice when he dismissed the beliefs that she had been raised with, things she felt in her heart to be true…
“If being intelligent means agreeing that faeries are the only people who matter,” she said, “then no, I suppose I’m not. But if that’s what you really believe, then why did you help us?”
Instead of answering, Rob bent his head over the guitar and began a lilting, mournful melody. Linden watched his averted face a moment, then added more quietly, “And who taught you to play?”
Rob’s hands fell away from the strings. “Enough,” he said in a harsh voice as he took off the instrument and laid it back in its case. “It is my business to ask questions, not to answer them. Or have you already forgotten the terms of our bargain?”
Linden reddened. She was so used to talking freely with Knife and Paul and some of her fellow Oakenfolk, it was easy to forget that most faeries used conversation only as a tool-or a weapon. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”
Rob was silent a moment. Then he said, “I may regret asking this, but…are you one of the Plant Rhys Ddwfn?”
“Plawnt hreece thuvin?” repeated Linden, puzzled. “What does that mean?”
“The Children of Rhys the Deep,” said Rob. “And since you do not recognize the name, then clearly, I was mistaken.” He swore under his breath. “I should have known. That one of the Children would come to me-it was too easy. But where else could you have come from, to know nothing of the Empress and be generous even to humans?”
“Do you want me to tell you?” asked Linden.
Rob slumped back into the chair. “I suppose you may yet say something worth hearing,” he said, though his voice held little hope. “Very well, go on.”
Linden sat up straighter. This might be her only chance to explain why she had come to London, to make Rob understand the Oakenfolk’s desperate situation and persuade him, if he could be persuaded, to help.
“My name is Linden,” she began, “and I come from a place called the Oakenwyld…”
When she had finished her story, Rob sat for a long moment without speaking. Then he said in a voice that rasped with disbelief, “You mean to tell me that you and your fellow Oakenfolk-every one of you-are female, and always have been? For five hundred years you have lived alone in your Oak, and never seen a single male of our kind?”
Linden nodded, relieved that he finally understood. “Until I met you tonight,” she said, “I had no idea that male faeries even existed.”
“And before this Jasmine you spoke of came along and cast her spell, your people used to have their children by humans?”
“Only now and then,” said Linden hastily, blushing. “Most often we took girl children the humans didn’t want and turned them into faeries instead. But we can’t do either of those things anymore. Not without our magic.”