“I don’t know their part of the story,” admitted Linden. “But I’m sure they were punished too. The point is, humans and faeries were meant to work together. We need each other.”
Rob gave her a pitying look. “A child’s tale,” he said, “left over from a time when our people were too ignorant to know better. I would not be surprised to find that the humans made it up themselves, to keep us in our place. But you are a young woman now, and surely, you are too intelligent to believe such fables?”
Linden was flustered. To be treated as an adult was flattering, even more so when the speaker was a male of her own kind. And to be called intelligent pleased her as well. But the contempt in Rob’s voice when he dismissed the beliefs that she had been raised with, things she felt in her heart to be true…
“If being intelligent means agreeing that faeries are the only people who matter,” she said, “then no, I suppose I’m not. But if that’s what you really believe, then why did you help us?”
Instead of answering, Rob bent his head over the guitar and began a lilting, mournful melody. Linden watched his averted face a moment, then added more quietly, “And who taught you to play?”
Rob’s hands fell away from the strings. “Enough,” he said in a harsh voice as he took off the instrument and laid it back in its case. “It is my business to ask questions, not to answer them. Or have you already forgotten the terms of our bargain?”
Linden reddened. She was so used to talking freely with Knife and Paul and some of her fellow Oakenfolk, it was easy to forget that most faeries used conversation only as a tool-or a weapon. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”
Rob was silent a moment. Then he said, “I may regret asking this, but…are you one of the Plant Rhys Ddwfn?”
“Plawnt hreece thuvin?” repeated Linden, puzzled. “What does that mean?”
“The Children of Rhys the Deep,” said Rob. “And since you do not recognize the name, then clearly, I was mistaken.” He swore under his breath. “I should have known. That one of the Children would come to me-it was too easy. But where else could you have come from, to know nothing of the Empress and be generous even to humans?”
“Do you want me to tell you?” asked Linden.
Rob slumped back into the chair. “I suppose you may yet say something worth hearing,” he said, though his voice held little hope. “Very well, go on.”
Linden sat up straighter. This might be her only chance to explain why she had come to London, to make Rob understand the Oakenfolk’s desperate situation and persuade him, if he could be persuaded, to help.
“My name is Linden,” she began, “and I come from a place called the Oakenwyld…”
When she had finished her story, Rob sat for a long moment without speaking. Then he said in a voice that rasped with disbelief, “You mean to tell me that you and your fellow Oakenfolk-every one of you-are female, and always have been? For five hundred years you have lived alone in your Oak, and never seen a single male of our kind?”
Linden nodded, relieved that he finally understood. “Until I met you tonight,” she said, “I had no idea that male faeries even existed.”
“And before this Jasmine you spoke of came along and cast her spell, your people used to have their children by humans?”
“Only now and then,” said Linden hastily, blushing. “Most often we took girl children the humans didn’t want and turned them into faeries instead. But we can’t do either of those things anymore. Not without our magic.”
Rob shook his head. “Impossible,” he murmured. “After all these centuries…”
Linden’s heart thumped painfully. Was he saying that it was too late to help the Oakenfolk? She was about to plead with him, but Rob cut in:
“And you truly believe that all you need do is ask, or offer some crude bargain, and the rest of us will rush to help you, just like that?”
“I–I don’t know,” she said. Put like that, it did sound hopelessly naive. “But I had to try. There are only a few of us left alive now. And now that the spells that protect the Oak are weakening, soon it won’t even be safe for us to live there anymore-”
“Then why not ask your human friends to take you in? Surely there must be room for you all in that big House of theirs.”
“But that wouldn’t be fair to them,” protested Linden. “And it wouldn’t be safe for us, either. One or two of us might be able to hide away in the House, but not all. And if the other humans found out, they’d try to capture us, study us-”
“Then perhaps you should have thought of that before you threw in your lot with the humans in the first place,” said Rob coldly as he got to his feet. “Because I can tell you that the Empress rules the whole of this great island, and no faery under her command will ever give help to one of the Forsaken.”
“The…Forsaken?”
“I had believed you to be no more than a legend,” Rob went on in the same flat tone. “Faeries who so loved humans that they would serve them like slaves, choosing even to wed with them and bear their children rather than be true to their own faery blood. Traitors and renegades, exiled from the rest of our people centuries ago. If the Empress knew that I had helped you, even in ignorance…” He pulled up his hood and moved toward the door.
“Wait!” Linden leaped off the bed and darted to intercept him. “Where are you going? You’re not going to tell her, are you? Please!”
Rob closed his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. “No,” he said. “But Veronica will not be so discreet-and she was not the only one who witnessed your rescue of the human boy. It will not be long before the Empress learns what you did this night and draws her own conclusions. And then your life, and the boy’s, too, will be forfeit.”
Linden stood rooted, trembling with horror and fury. Then she burst out, “Well, if that’s the kind of law you live by here-if that’s what your Empress calls justice-then it’s no wonder my people decided they’d be better off with the humans!”
“Linden…” It was the first time Rob had spoken her name, but she was too upset to care.
Hotly, she went on: “Maybe we are renegades, as you say, but at least we know enough to care about something besides ourselves. At least we still remember that we belong to the Great Gardener, and not to some Empress who goes around putting people to death at the flick of a wing! I’m sorry I wasn’t one of your precious Children of Peace-”
“Rhys,” said Rob.
“-but if you ask me, it makes no difference. Because if they’re known for being generous and kind to humans, I can’t imagine that they’d be any more impressed with your attitude than I am!”
She finished the sentence with a glare, daring Rob to make some caustic retort. But unaccountably, his stern expression softened. He reached out and touched her hair, letting the brown curls tumble between his fingers.
“You are young,” he said. “And altogether too innocent to survive in this hard world. But you have courage. And the human boy-he played well tonight.”
He glanced over at Timothy, still sprawled oblivious across the bed. “Let him sleep a little while longer, then wake him and go to the nearest train station. My people are not fond of places where many humans gather; you should be safe there until you can find transport out of the city. Return to your Oak quickly, and remain there, and you may yet escape the Empress. I cannot promise you anything more.”
Linden caught his arm. “But if we leave, how will I find the help we need? Surely not all the other faeries serve the Empress-if I just knew where to look-”
“That,” said Rob, “was what I had hoped you would be able to tell me. So it seems we are both disappointed.” He shrugged away from her grasp, flung the door open, and was gone.
“Timothy. Wake up.” Linden was shaking him. “We have to go.”
He groaned and rolled onto his back, blinking his sleep-gummed eyes against the light. “What, already?”
“Yes, right away. Rob’s gone, and-” She cast a nervous glance at the open door. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
Timothy swung his legs around and sat up, squinting at his watch: 5:47 A.M. Beyond the cracked window the sky was still dark, the streetlights glowing eerily through a haze of mist. He felt dislocated, as though he had
