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“He weaves threads of magic into images. That was nice. It is a bit boring, you know.”
“Is it? Can’t you see outside?”
It sighed, with a squinched grimace. “No. That’s the other latch. We never talk.”
“Did the cold mage do anything else?”
“Not until you got into the coach. And I must say, except for looking at you a lot when you were asleep, he sat very still, not like you, shifting about and rubbing the cushions and snoring when you sleep.”
“I do not snore!”
“You do! So did the dreamer.”
I realized that every word Bee and I had said, in the privacy of this coach, the gremlin had overheard and could repeat.
It spoke as gleefully as that little beast Astraea when she had been thwarted of something she wanted and felt her only leverage to sway you was just being mean. “The Wild Hunt knows she exists. Her scent is on me, on you, on these cushions, on the wind. When next the gate opens to the Deathlands, they’ll ride through, hunt her down, and kill her.”
I riposted with an attack. “Are you glad of it?”
“Oh, I don’t care,” said the gremlin, mouth flat as if hiding another emotion. “Why should I care? She would have hacked me to pieces.”
“No, because I would have hacked you to pieces first. No offense intended. We just wanted to run away. Can you blame me?”
The gremlin shut its burning eyes and remained silent for so long that I bent closer, my breath visible as a shimmering glamour on its brass face.
“Remember one thing, little cat.” Its voice altered, as if someone else were speaking through its mouth. “You must have his permission to ask questions. Do not ask questions.”
A gust of wind sprinkled salt spray over my face, and I blinked. When I looked again, the latch was just a smooth brass latch. Cautiously, I touched it, but it did not bite.
“Hey, there,” I whispered.
It did not answer.
On we rolled through the restless sea-swept night. Every time a big swell struck the causeway and splashed, I flinched as droplets spattered my face. Yet I could not bring myself to close the shutters, for then I would truly feel I was in a cage.
Bee had crossed. She would find Rory. They were safe. That belief I clung to.
On we rolled, and I did not sleep.
After forever, night lightened to day. The wind-washed sea spread to a horizon so gray it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. At first I took the pale shapes rising and falling along the swells for boats, and then I realized they were rafts of ice. I shivered and drew my coat tighter around me as the coach slowed to a halt.
The horses stamped.
A footfall clapped on stone.
I clambered out because I could not bear to sit inside for one more breath. Better to plunge into the storm than cower to await its blow.
We had come to the end of the road.
The causeway ended in a pile of rocks. Breakers boiled at their base. The gray sea was whipped by a stark wind under an iron sky. Islands of ice peaked and troughed as swells passed beneath them. The wind chapped my face, and when I licked my lips to moisten them, I tasted my own blood, for the wind’s icy claws had cut them.
“Go to your sire,” said the coachman. He pointed to a rowboat leashed to a post among the rocks, waves breaking beneath its fragile ribs. “We have brought you as far as we can.”
Once or twice in your life the iron stone of evil tidings passes from its exile in Sheol into that place just under your ribs that makes it hard to breathe. That makes you think you’re going to die, or you’re dead already, or that the bad thing you thought might happen is actually far worse than you had ever dreamed and that even if you wake up, it won’t go away.
“My sire?” I whispered, my mind recoiling.
All that was out there was cold, deadly water.
