Silver Borne

We were talking quietly, but I wasn’t too worried about being discovered. There was a feeling of . . . emptiness here that told me that there was no life other than the roots that tangled in my hair and tripped my feet.

“We—” I stopped, remembering that I wasn’t supposed to discuss anything about the fairy queen. Had I already broken my word? Did it matter when we were storming the castle?

“Jesse,” I said, deciding to play it safe, “we haven’t pla

“There’s no pla

“That sounds . . . simple,” I said.

“It could be simple,” Ariana told me. “She ca

“Should we have brought—” Ariana’s fingers touched my lips.

“Best we not talk about what that one so desires in her lair,” she told me. “I expect she might hear that. And no. It is powerful, and even if it will not do as she wants, it will still do great harm in the wrong hands.”

“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 thi

There were already other tu

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 u

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 Do

“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 tu

“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 ru

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?”