in Her Majesty’s ear, poisoning her against me. Conspiring with your human-loving friends ”-she spat out the phrase as though it were blasphemy-“to put yourself on the throne. But we’ll see about that!” She flounced out the door again, adding over her shoulder, “You’re not Queen yet!”
Valerian remained silent until they heard the distant sound of Bluebell’s door slamming shut. Then she said, “Well. That was unfortunate.”
“You were right.” Linden bit her lip in distress. “What you told me before, about not being able to trust her… but she never used to be like that. What’s gotten into her?”
“This is Mallow’s work, I fear,” said Valerian. “Bluebell is vain and easily flattered-and just as easily controlled. But let that be, for now.” She took Linden by the shoulders. “Where have you been? Knife came to us yesterday, half mad with worry for you, and then we heard that the boy had disappeared as well-”
Timothy gave a little cough at that, and Linden colored. She shut the door, then turned back to Valerian and said apologetically, “I know. Because I went with him, and now…”
She concentrated, and the ache in her head eased a little as the invisibility glamour dissolved. Timothy stood awkwardly on the carpet in his muddy shoes, his hands in his pockets and the backpack sagging off one shoulder.
“Er, hello,” he said.
Valerian stared at him a moment, then turned on Linden. “What in the name of the Great Gardener possessed you?” she demanded. “To reveal our secrets to-” Then she stopped and took a deep breath, as though recollecting herself. “But no, I speak too soon. You came to tell the Queen something of great importance, and it would be folly to judge you before hearing what you have to say. Very well, go on.”
Relief spread through Linden. She would miss Queen Amaryllis terribly, but with someone as wise as Valerian taking her place, perhaps things wouldn’t be so bad. “It’s a long story,” she said. “Perhaps we should call some of the others to hear it, too?”
“I don’t want to be rude,” whispered Timothy in Linden’s ear, “but is there anything to eat around here? I’m starving.”
They were sitting at the table in the late Queen’s study, waiting for Valerian to return from summoning three other faeries-the Council, she’d called them-to hear their story.
“I’m hungry, too,” murmured Linden, and then in a louder voice as Valerian came back in, “Val-I mean, Your Majesty, do you think we might have something to eat?”
“Periwinkle is bringing refreshments, I believe,” said Valerian, sitting down at the end of the table. And sure enough, it was only a short time before the door opened again and a little red-haired faery bustled in with a tray almost as big as herself.
“Thorn and Campion are on their way,” she said breathlessly as she set it down. Then her eyes fell on Linden and Timothy, and she clapped both hands to her mouth with a little squeak. “Oh! But you’re-I mean he’s-”
Quickly Linden rose and embraced the other faery, who burst into tears and clung to her. “How could you go off like that and just disappear and not tell me or Knife or anyone, don’t you know we thought you were dead!”
“I’m so sorry, Wink,” Linden said. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course she will,” said a gruff voice from the doorway, and Timothy recognized Thorn, the faery who had passed him and Linden on the stairs. “Though if you ask me, she shouldn’t. Of all the fly-witted things to do-” Her eyes fell on Timothy. “Great Gardener! Who or what is that?”
“I apologize for the shock, Thorn,” said Valerian’s calm voice from the back of the room, “but I thought it best to summon you here first and explain later. Ah, Campion, there you are. Would you mind shutting the door behind you?”
Timothy had been through some bizarre experiences in the last couple of days, but this had to be one of the oddest: sitting at a table with five faeries-all of whom had noticeably pointed ears and long, translucent wings-while they took turns looking at him as though he were the strange one.
“I am grateful to you all for coming here at such short notice,” said Valerian. “The news of Her Majesty’s passing will soon spread throughout the Oak, and this may be our last opportunity to meet together for some time. Linden has brought us a human visitor, as I am sure you could not help but notice. I realize that this act is unprecedented, but there was reason for it, as you will soon hear. Linden?”
As Linden stood up and began telling their story, Timothy took a sip of his drink and nearly choked, it was so bitter. The cakes Wink had brought were dry and heavy, with hardly any sweetness to them, and only a generous dollop of honey helped them go down. He would have done anything for a plate of starchy matoke with some fish or beef sauce to flavor it, as he used to eat back in Uganda…
“WHAT?” yelled Thorn, and Timothy jumped, spilling his cup down the table. Wink grabbed a napkin and began mopping up the puddle, and Timothy was stammering an apology when he saw that Wink was smiling.
“I knew it!” she told him in hushed tones, as though they shared some wonderful secret. “I knew they were real, no matter what anyone said! I even thought you might be a faery yourself at first, only you don’t have wings…”
Oh. Now Timothy understood why Thorn had shouted: Linden had just told the Council there were male faeries. He’d been so focused on filling the emptiness in his stomach, he’d stopped paying attention to anything else.
He forced himself to concentrate as Linden explained what she’d learned from her conversation with Rob: how the Oakenfolk were considered Forsaken by the other faeries, that neither Rob nor any others under the faery Empress’s command would help them, and last of all that the Empress would execute any faeries or humans who defied her. She finished by telling how she and Timothy had fled the city, then dropped back into her chair, rubbing her forehead and looking spent.
“So all the other faeries hate us because they think we’re too friendly with humans?” said Wink in bewildered tones, and Thorn remarked acidly, “Now there’s an irony.”
“This Empress…” Campion toyed with her pencil, frowning. “She must be clever as well as powerful, to have so many faeries under her control. I wonder how she managed it? Especially if she’s been avoiding humans all this time, and they’re where our cleverest ideas come from.”
“Well, she hasn’t been avoiding them, obviously,” said Thorn. “Seems to me that she and her people find humans useful enough, or they wouldn’t be living right in the midst of them.”
Linden nodded. “But human beings are just cattle, as far as the Empress and her people are concerned. They’ve become so selfish and proud, they won’t even consider that it’s wrong to deceive humans and take their creativity by force.”
“Yes, but doesn’t it sound as though this Rob you met knew better?” Wink said. “If he went to the trouble of saving you and Timothy…”
“I thought so, too, at first,” Linden replied sadly, “but it turned out he was just hoping I was one of these Children of Rhys he’d been looking for. I don’t think we can count on him to help us again.”
The Council faeries all looked sober at this, and the room fell silent. Timothy waited for someone to come up with another idea or at least a question, but no one did. At last, frustrated, he spoke.
“Don’t tell me you’re all giving up already? All right, so you can’t count on the Empress and her people. But they can’t be the only faeries in the world. What about trying to find the Children of Rhys yourselves?”
“Timothy, I already told you-” began Linden, but Valerian held up her hand.
“No, let him speak; I can see by his face he has more to say, and I would not dismiss his words without hearing them.” She turned to Timothy. “Please, go on.”
“You’re assuming that if Rob couldn’t find the Children, you can’t either,” Timothy said. “But I’m not sure that’s true. You’ve been cut off from the other faeries for hundreds of years, so obviously they know a lot of things about the world that you don’t. But your people seem to know some things that the Empress and her faeries have forgotten, too. Don’t you have any legends or history books or something that might tell you about the Children of Rhys?”
Campion pushed back her chair and rose. “There’s nothing about them in the archives downstairs, I know that much. But perhaps there’s something here…” She began inspecting the bookshelves that lined the room, her head cocked to one side.
“Well thought,” said Valerian, inclining her head to Timothy. “If I had any doubt of Linden’s wisdom in bringing you to us, I have none now. Yet if we can find nothing in the Oak’s records to tell us of the Children, what
