A local habitation

“You got a reason I shouldn’t ride you hard? You come here with your little pretty boy, sucking up to Jan, acting like it’s going to be okay now that your precious liege is involved—weren’t we good enough to save before he cared?”

“We didn’t know you were in trouble. No one told us what was happening here.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“It’s going to have to be good enough, because it’s the truth. I’m sick of you treating me like crap, and Quentin even worse, just because you’re scared.”

“You should have known something was wrong. Your precious purebloods should have figured it out.” Her eyes were bright with past hurts and anger. “Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“You don’t like the purebloods much, do you?”

“What was your first clue?” She turned her face away. “I’m just returning the favor.”

It’s not unusual for changelings to be resentful. Hell, I’mresentful. Our immortal parents get the best of Faerie and take what they want from the mortal world, and we get the things they let us have. Even so, the level of her resentment was unusual. She almost burned with it. “Mind if I ask why?”

“Yes,” she said, curtly. Then, in a quieter voice, she said, “Mom was pureblooded Coblynau. Dad was a changeling, and I was an accident. I’m just mortal enough that the mines won’t have me, and I’m not mortal enough for the mongrel workshops. You want to spend your life getting screwed? Try mine on for size.”

I winced. “You’re right. That sucks.”

The Coblynau make their homes in deep mines, deeper even than the Dwarves and the Gremlins. Being a changeling made Gordan unsuited for a life lived entirely at those depths. Being more fae than human, on the other hand, would make her too sensitive to iron to deal with the changeling workshops, and get her eyed with suspicion in the border communities. It was a tough break, no matter how you wanted to slice it.

“You have no idea.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” I felt sorry for her. That wasn’t stopping me from getting a

Gordan glared at me. I glared back, and she was the first one to look away.

I relaxed marginally. Victories, even small ones, are good things. I’m petty enough that they matter to me, and as long as that’s the case, I’m still human enough to stand a chance. “It’s okay to be mad,” I said, as gently as I could.

She shrugged. “Is it?” she asked. I took that to be her way of getting choked up. The Coblynau have never been very visual with their feelings.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ve been mad since I got here. People don’t help when they say they will, they keep wandering around on their own . . . I’m pissed.”

“So why are you here?”

“Why?” I shrugged, settling on the truth. “Sylvester asked me to come, and you need me.”

“You don’t care if we die,” she said, tone turning bitter. She looked back at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re just here because your liege ordered you to be.”

“He didn’t order, he asked. And you’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I docare if you all die, because Faerie cares. I care because no one needs to die, and,” I raised one hand in mock melodrama, “Sylvester will kick my ass if I don’t care.”

It worked. She bit back a smile, half-turning to keep me from noticing. Ha; too late. I can be pretentious sometimes, but I know it, and knowing your flaws means you can exploit them. “This would work better if we weren’t fighting,” I said.

She looked back. “You’re right,” she conceded, “it probably would.”

“You don’t have to like me. I mean, April doesn’t.”

Gordan gri

“I noticed. Why is that?”

“She’s distanced.”

“Distanced?” I asked. I wanted Gordan to relax, but I had a job to do, and part of it was learning everything I could about the remaining inhabitants of Tamed Lightning. Most of them were probably nice folks, but one of them was a killer.

“She used to be a tree. She did tree things—she drank water, absorbed nutrients from the soil, photosynthesized—the good stuff.” She leaned back in her chair, now on familiar ground. “You want to talk ‘cycle of nature,’ trees have it down. Everything nature does is in a tree.”

“True enough.”

“So she’s a tree. Only suddenly she’s nota tree, she’s a network server. It’s cold there. It does server things, not living things. Instead of sunlight, she has electricity. Instead of roots, she has cables. It’s stuff she didn’t need before. So she starts to learn these new things—how to be a good machine—and she forgets about sunlight, and water in her roots, and photosynthesis.”

“Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “The Dryad is the tree.”

“Right. The more she knows about being a machine, the less she knows about being anything else.”

“But she still likes some people.”

“No, she likes Jan. The rest of us are tolerated as functions her ‘mother’ needs to remain operational.” Gordan shrugged. “It’s no big deal. We’re used to her.”

“Doesn’t it seem a bit . . . strange?”

“Have you ever met anyone with a cat they’d adopted from the pound?”

I blinked, a little thrown by the conversational shift. “Yes.”

“Let me guess: the cat was devoted to them and hated everyone else. Am I close?”

“Yeah,” I said, thoughtfully. Mitch and Stacy adopted a kitten from the SPCA once. It was a little ball of fluffy feline evil, set permanently on “kill.” Every time Shadow saw me—or Cliff, or even Kerry—he launched himself for whatever tender bits were closest to hand and started trying to remove them. But he never stopped purring when Stacy was around.

He died of old age two years before I came home. According to Mitch, he never mellowed: even when he was toothless and half-blind, he kept trying to savage anyone who came to visit. Good for him.

“It’s like that for April and Jan. April was the lost kitten at the pound, and Jan was the one who brought her home. It makes sense for April to be totally devoted. Personally, I’m amazed you can ever get her to stop following Jan around.”

“So they’re always together?”

“Not always. But if Jan snaps her fingers and says ‘jump,’ you can bet April will be right there to make sure you’re asking ‘how high.’ ”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Gordan fixed me with a stare. “I may not be big on the purebloods as a whole, but there’s a lot of loyalty around here. You might want to watch who you’re pointing the finger at.”

There’s no arguing with a statement like that. “I need to be getting back. You shouldn’t be here on your own.”

“I’m a big girl.” She held up a small black box. “This is my panic button. Anything comes for me, I push this, and the server failure alarm goes off. Don’t worry about me.”

I frowned. “Why doesn’t everyone have one of those?”

“We’ve never needed them before.”

“We need them now.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She looked at me impassively, adding, “I’m not moving.”

“I got that.” I sighed, rising. “Don’t die.”

“Not intending to.”

I walked away into the darkness, feeling her eyes on my back until I turned the corner back onto the main pathway. I wasn’t comfortable leaving her alone, but I was even less comfortable staying, and I wasn’t going to fight with her. Not until I’d had the chance to go over Barbara’s papers and figure out what, exactly, they meant.

Thanks to the air-conditioning being off while we were on generator power, it was actually cooler outside the building. I squinted up at the moon, and then glanced to my watch. Almost four o’clock; the sun would be up soon. Just one more complication for the list.