Wren did not often encounter anyone as blunt as himself. It almost tricked him into giving a true answer. Instead, he resigned himself to reply, “I am a clerk. I wish you would state your business at once, sir, as I have much to do and little time to spend standing about in corridors consulting with lunatics.”
“If you have so little time as you say,” the stranger countered, “perhaps we should meet elsewhere when you are more at liberty, for I’ve too much to explain at present.”
How convenient, Wren thought. Aloud, and as much to appease his curiosity as to arrange a meeting, Wren asked, “When and where would you suggest?”
“Name your place and time. I am at your mercy.”
Wren thought he’d prepared himself to expect anything from the stranger. Yet that final phrase gave him pause. In life he’d more often found matters quite the other way around.
The stranger, meanwhile, appeared unaware he’d said anything strange and awaited his answer with the patience of an oak.
“The Green Man,” Wren blurted. “Tonight. Eight o’ clock.”
The stranger conceded with a nod. “As you wish.”
He turned and descended the stair in the same queer fashion, reached the lower landing, and had his hand on the door-latch before Wren recovered his senses enough to reply.
“And whom shall I say is waiting for me, sir?” Wren called down, his frustration lending the question a bitter aftertaste.
The stranger paused at the bottom of the stair and glanced up to meet Wren’s eyes again with that burning gaze.
“Butcher,” he said.
Then he donned his mask, threw his hood over his hat, and stalked through the door.
The wind slammed it shut behind him.
~
Chapter Two
Mortals might lie, Shrike considered as he stalked away from the Knights Templar’s crumbling fortress, but scrying could not. The clerk held the key to his victory.
Still, Shrike’s return to the mortal realm after several centuries’ absence had not proved quite as smooth as he might have hoped. While the acorn guided him through the forest to the Grove of Gates, stepping into the portal felt like marching against a howling wind.
Forcing his way through, Shrike had found himself engulfed in an acrid fog.
He stumbled to his knees onto close-cropped grass. His flailing hand braced against a sapling to keep himself upright as he dry-heaved. Iron hung in the air itself. Its heavy ache seemed to fly at him from all directions. In past centuries this particular passage between the realms had led to the lands belonging to Westminster Abbey. What had happened to the mortal realm since then, he could not begin to imagine.
But he would find out.
Shrike hauled himself upright against the sapling. The rush of falling water mingled with more distant hoof-beats, voices, and metallic clanging in his ears. Glancing ‘round, he found he stood in a copse of trees by a waterfall with a ring of small pale mushrooms surrounding him. Not a single tree-trunk spanned wider than his hand, and he felt certain the river had not existed on his last journey to the site.
Yet the acorn drew him away from the river, north and to the east.
Shrike staggered through the fog. His strides came surer with every step as he grew used to the fatiguing influence of the surrounding iron. Soon he stumbled on a well-trod foot-path amidst the close-cropped grass.
Glimpses of changing mortal costume had rippled through the fae realms in the intervening centuries. Certain courtly fae had habits of stealing whichever trends struck their fancy—or stealing the mortal tailors themselves—both of which meant fae attire often became a motley whirlwind of hundreds of years’ worth of mortal innovation. While Shrike did not often venture out into fae society, he had caught a few hints of it amidst the wild hunt and had thought breeches, stockings, tricorn hats, and flimsy high-waisted gowns were the latest mortal fashions. Instead, when he encountered the footpath, he found mortals wearing trousers, shawls, and bell-shaped skirts with yards and yards of draping. These mortals appeared no less bemused by his own garb. While some wore capes, none wore cloaks, and nothing as well-crafted as Shrike’s fur-lined hood or his tall leather boots.
Their sheer number proved likewise astonishing. Tens of thousands had walked London’s streets when last Shrike wandered through the city. The population seemed to have multiplied a thousandfold since then. Everywhere he turned, he beheld mortals wandering to and fro. Most on foot. Some mounted on horseback. And still others rattling along in chariots.
One particular chariot almost ran him down as he strode towards his quest’s object. The gelding pulled up short with a shriek and reared, its hooves striking the air inches from his face. The mortal at the reins shook his fist and called Shrike a blackguard. The passengers in voluminous skirts screamed almost as loud as the horse.
Shrike touched the brim of his hat and continued on. None of them would bring him his promised victory. That individual lay somewhere further beyond, towards the heart of the city.
The acorn guided him north-eastward. Shrike followed it in a straight line regardless of paths, plants, or people, which earned him many an odd look, but he cared not.
Until it brought him to iron.
