[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
love would ever consider assaulting such a fortress.
But.
She turned abruptly and made her way through the streets, until she found herself outside Jacqueline and
Daughters, Dry Goods. She passed soundlessly through the door and followed the intuition that told her
where Bryan slept.
His bed was in the basement, among rolls of cloth and barrels of dried beans. Undoubtedly his aunt and
invalid mother shared the upstairs apartment. Mina could see him clearly even in the near-absolute
darkness.
"Bryan," she whispered, putting power into the call.
He started up, then blinked rapidly, trying to focus on her through the haze of sleep that still clung to him.
"Mina? What are you doing here?"
"I ve come to ask your help," she said, sitting down on the cot beside him. He tugged self-consciously on
his sleeping-robe, and she had to suppress a laugh at his modesty. "You know how to contact the other
faelings, don t you?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Find as many as you can tomorrow. But only go to the ones you know you can trust, the ones who
chafe the most against the Seelie Court s domination of this city. The ones who know how to keep quiet
when there s need. And for God s sake, don t go to Jeremiah. I don t want Duncan to get wind of this."
He frowned and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Why not? What are you going to do?"
Mina stood up and looked down at him. "What we all should have done a long time ago. I ve had it with
the Seelie Court, Bryan. I can t just sit around and simply accept as inevitable whatever hell they make
out of my life.
"I m going to fight back."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mina stood nervously in the tiny park that she and Bryan had worked out as a convenient meeting place.
A small ruin from the oldest phase of the city stood in the center of the green, its tumbled walls making
humps among the vines that crawled over it. An owl called stridently from a tree nearby, only to be
answered by a second somewhere in the distance: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?
She felt the faelings before she saw them; the faint whisper of their dark power brushed over her skin like
a winter wind. Those with the most fae blood had eyes that seemed to gleam in the night, like the eyes of
animals, and she wondered if hers did as well. They came behind Bryan, drifting in by ones and twos,
until they formed a loose semi-circle before her. Mina spotted Fox among them, her swollen hands for
once stilled.
"Bryan said that you wanted to talk to us," said Michael s beautiful voice. There was an edge of mockery
in it, as if she couldn t possibly have anything important to say.
Mina swallowed down her nervousness and faced them squarely. "Yes. The Seelie Court has had too
much power for too long. Some of you have spent your entire lives running from them. I ve only been
doing it for a few months, and already I m sick of it. I don t want to live like this."
Michael shrugged elegantly. "Then leave Dere. Oh, that s right you can t. They re looking for you."
"Leaving Dere doesn t solve the problem! The influence of the Seelie Court is felt everywhere in Niune.
Remember Duncan s family?"
A lean, hungry-looking man by the name of Halston let out a snort of contempt. "So what do you want to
do? Attack the Court? Stage a coup? Kill the royal family? Good luck!"
"I m not a fool," Mina said quietly, struggling to control her anger. "Of course we can t do that. But the
problem isn t just the RiLlyns, sitting in their palace laughing at us. It s the Knights and Hounds lurking in
the streets. And those we can fight, if we re careful."
"You can t fight the Knights and Hounds," Halston objected.
"Like hell! Duncan and Bryan killed a Hound that attacked me. I killed one by myself when it came to the
factory, and Duncan got rid of a Knight and a Hound together. We can fight them."
"But what would be the point?" asked Janine in her childlike voice.
Mina smiled cruelly. "The point is that there isn t an unlimited number of Knights and Hounds. They were
once seelie faelings the Court isn t creating them out of whole cloth. How many could there be?"
"There isn t an unlimited number of us, either," Michael pointed out dryly.
"No. But the difference is that we are going to be controlling the encounters, not them. Before, they ve
always hunted us. Now we ll hunt them. Duncan says that there are patrols near the palace, but that s too
dangerous. They also go down to the main roads, where they can keep an eye out on people entering the
city, looking for faelings." She remembered the little boy Roderick had murdered in front of her surely
that was how he d been found. "Plus, we know that they re guarding the main ways in and out of the city,
looking for me. We know where they are if we go to them, with enough force that the battle will be
one-sided in our favor, we can kill them."
Michael watched her with arrogance in his deadly blue eyes. "And what good do you think all this will
do?"
"I think it will give us a better chance than we have now. The fewer the Knights and Hounds there are,
the safer we all are."
"I m with Mina," Janine said unexpectedly. "I m tired of hiding all the time, worrying about being dragged
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]