Patricia Briggs - Silver Borne

“All right,” I said.

Samuel raised his head. “Best we not talk anymore at all. I’m starting to pick up the scent of people now.”

I could smell them, too, once he’d pointed it out. We were coming upon more-traveled ways. The loose dirt of the floor became packed earth, and the roots thinned and were replaced with rough-cut square blocks as the dirt floor became cobbles, and the ceiling rose so Samuel could stand up straight again.

There were already other tunnels joining ours.

I caught the scent before Samuel, but I think it was only because the woman came upon us from behind, and I was walking last. It didn’t matter, though, because I only had time to whirl around, and she was upon us.

She wore a torn jacket and filthy jeans and carried a large wooden cutting board in both her hands. She walked right into me and bounced off. When she tried to walk around me, I blocked her a second time.

“Take this to the kitchen,” she said, without looking up at me. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, all of her attention on the board she held. Her hair hung in ragged clumps, and there was dirt on her knuckles. Around her neck was a thin silver collar. “The kitchen, child. The kitchen. Take this to the kitchen.”

I moved out of her way, and she all but sprinted past us.

“She’s not taking care of her thralls,” said Ariana disapprovingly.

“Thrall?” asked Jesse.

“Slave,” I answered. “You know when someone is enthralled with a movie or a boyfriend—that’s from the same root word.”

“Follow her,” said Ariana. “The kitchen should be at the heart of Elphame.”

We jogged after her, passing by a young man in a police uniform, a woman in a jogging suit, and an older woman carrying a steaming teapot, all wearing silver collars, and all moving with unnatural intentness. The floor switched from cobbles to stone tiles, and the ceiling rose again until it was fifteen feet or more above our heads.

The gems that had lit the passage we had been in were lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling from something that could equally well have been fine silver wire or spiderwebs. Whatever it was, it didn’t look strong enough to hold them. Samuel’s head would hit the lower gemstones once in a while, sending them swinging.

We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set—a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer. I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver . . . or Gabriel Sandoval, either. The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top. People with silver collars were preparing food and drink—and didn’t seem to notice our presence at all. The woman we’d followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.

“Excuse me,” said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.

“Stir the pot seventy times seven,” he said.

“Where are they keeping the prisoners?” Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could. His voice echoed oddly in the room.

Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop. One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel. The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last. He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways. The others, one by one, pointed the same way.

“Forty-seven steps,” the oatmeal stirrer said.

“Take the right tunnel,” said a man who’d been chopping turnips.

“Eighteen steps and turn,” said a girl kneading bread. “The key is on the hook. The door is yellow.”

“Do not let them out,” said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.

“Resume your tasks,” said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.

“I think that’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Jesse. “Are we just going to leave these people here?”

“We’re going to get Gabriel out and Phin,” said Ariana. “And then we’ll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls. Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that. In the Elphame, she rules utterly.”

“What if she’s enthralled Gabriel?”

“She won’t have,” said Ariana positively. “She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences. And my Phin is protected against such a thing.”

The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we’d taken into it. The floor was made of those small white octagonal tiles with a line of black tiles running about a foot from either wall. Forty-seven paces from the kitchen, the tunnel widened into a small room. The black tiles formed a complicated Celtic knot in the center of the room. There were passageways that opened across from ours, and one to either side.

We took the one to the right. Here the floor was rough wooden planks that showed the marks of being hand hewn. It creaked a little under Samuel, who was the heaviest of us.

“Eighteen,” he said, and there was a yellow door with an old-fashioned key hanging off a hook—the first door we’d seen in the Elphame.

Samuel took the key from the lock and opened the door.

“Doc?” said Gabriel. “What are you doing here?”

“Gabriel.” Jesse pushed past Samuel.

Key in hand, Samuel followed her in. Ariana and I brought up the rear.

Gabriel was hugging Jesse. “What are all of you doing here? Did she get you, too?”

The room was white. White stone walls, white ceiling with clear crystals hanging down to light the room. The floors were made of a single slab of polished white marble. There were two beds with white bedding.

The only color in the room came from Gabriel and the man who was lying on one of the beds. He looked dreadful, and I’d never have recognized him if Ariana hadn’t whispered his name.

Phin sat up slowly, as if his ribs hurt, and Ariana rushed to kneel beside his bed on one knee.

He frowned at her. “Who?”

“Grandma Alicia,” she said.

He looked startled, then he smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you don’t look like anyone’s grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?”

“No,” said Samuel, who had turned to face the doorway. “It’s a trap.”

“Welcome to my home,” said a familiar dark voice. “I’m so happy you came to call.”

The woman who stood in the doorway of the cell was lovely. Her hair was dark smoke, pulled back in a complicated braid composed of many small plaits. It flowed down her back and dragged the ground like an Arabian show horse’s tail and set off the porcelain of her skin and the rose of her lips.

She was looking at me. “I am so glad to have you in my home, Mercedes Thompson. I was just trying to call you on my cell when—imagine my surprise—I discovered that you were here. But you did not bring it.” Having a fairy queen talking about cell phones almost was enough to make me laugh. Almost.

I raised my chin. By stealth, by strength, by bargain. “I am not such a poor bargainer, fairy queen. If I had brought it, we could not play.”

She smiled, and her silver-gray eyes warmed. “By all means,” she said. “Let us play.”

“BUT THIS IS NOT THE PROPER PLACE FOR BARGAINING,” she said. “Follow me.”