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She closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’
It sounded like there was abutabout to follow; she didn’t speak it out loud.
‘But?’ I said.
‘But the question is what we should do once we know where she’s headed,’ Lyn mumbled, climbing off the table to plop down into a chair and bury her head in her arms. ‘Which I wish was as easy as—’
The tent cloth was brusquely yanked aside before she could finish her sentence, and Edored’s habitually overexcited voice burst in. ‘Nosebreaker!’
I nearly jumped head-first through the ceiling cloth.
The alf came trotting in with a worryingly broad smile on his face, his leather coat snapping around his legs – looking like he was the tirelessly determined dog and I was the stick he had been looking for since sunrise. His exalted ‘There you are!’, far louder than the distance between us required, did nothing to soften that impression either.
Next to me, Lyn muttered a long-suffering prayer for strength as she closed her eyes.
‘Am I?’ I said cautiously.
‘Well, you don't look like you're anywhere else,’ Edored said without the faintest trace of irony in his face-splitting grin. ‘Do you have a moment? We've got something for you.’
‘Oh, gods,’ Lyn said, opening one eye for the sole purpose of throwing him a devastating glare. ‘Now, Edored?’
‘When else, Phiramelyndra?’ he returned, rolling his eyes at her. ‘When we’re all dead and in our graves? Also, don’t blame me. The others came up with it.’
‘The … others?’ I said even more cautiously.
He pulled a face. ‘Can’t tell you.’
I blinked at Lyn, who shrugged apologetically at me but didn’t say anything, and then at the tent entrance behind Edored’s leather-clad back, which was deserted.The others– who in the world was he talking about? The family? Him and his drinking friends? Hell, the Underground as a whole?
‘Look, I’m rather busy,’ I said weakly, gesturing at the maps before us. ‘If your secret could possibly wait until we’re sure the Mother isn’t about to wipe the Fireborn Palace off the face of the earth …’
‘Oh, this is more important,’ Edored brightly informed me.
Zera help me. ‘Then at the very least give me another hour to—’
‘No, no, no.’ He shook his head, still grinning broadly. ‘You don't get it, Noisy Death. This can't wait another hour. I have instructions to bring you to’ – he interrupted himself, clearly having been on the verge of blurting out some monumental secret – ‘tosomewhereimmediately, and if I have to drag you there, then it will be my pleasure.’
The whole business was getting more ominous by the heartbeat. I threw another look at Lyn, holding on to some desperate hope that she would burst out laughing and admit that they were all just pulling a prank on me – but Lyn only mouthed a silent apology and Edored was now impatiently hopping from one leg to the other.
‘Is anyone in danger?’ I guessed, more and more befuddled. ‘If people are dying, just tell me and I—’
‘No danger!’ he interrupted, waving that notion aside with an exasperated snort. ‘But if danger is going to make you move faster, I'm more than happy to hold Fury against a couple of throats, Nosebreaker. Whatever works for you.’
Good gods.
‘Oh,fine,’ I muttered, rising from my chair to grab his wrist. ‘But it better be very damn urgent. And —’
We were already fading.
It took longer than I'd hoped. The world blurred and kept blurring, one endlessly long heartbeat and then another; wherever we were going, we definitely weren't staying in the vicinity of the White City. Pine green mingled with a sooty black around us. The spray of waves hit me in the face. I smelled musty earth, fish, dew on leaves. Then, finally, the world started piecing itself back together, the smell of the islands I knew replaced by …
Smoke.
I managed to suck in one deep breath before the thick, metallic vapour settled itself into my lungs and nostrils, sending me doubling over in a fit of coughs. Next to me, Edored had wisely tugged the collar of his shirt over his mouth and nose, looking down at me a little crestfallen as he helplessly patted me on the back.
‘You do need to keep breathing, Emelin,’ he told me helpfully as I retched and heaved. ‘When I told you no one was dying, I didn't meanyouwere supposed to take on the role of—’
‘Wherearewe?’ I sputtered, spitting the words out between coughs. ‘If you’re trying to drag me into hell …’
