The Borderkind (8 page)

“I agree,” Frost said. “With time against us, and more of our number dying by the day, the swiftest course is our only choice. We must travel back through Euphrasia and into Yucatazca, gathering as many Borderkind as we can along the way, find Ty’Lis, and force the truth from him. When he is dead, the Hunters will stop.”

“You hope,” Oliver said, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

All of the Borderkind turned to look at him.

“What do you mean?” Blue Jay asked.

Oliver shrugged. “Just that you’d better be sure he’s the only one giving orders before you kill him. And even with him dead, if the Hunters have agreed to do the job, who’s to say if they’ll be willing to quit?”

Wayland Smith waved a hand. “Regardless, the task is the same. The only sensible course is to reach Ty’Lis, find the truth, and if he is our enemy, destroy him. But I won’t be coming with you, I’m afraid.”

Frost frowned, icy brow crinkling. “Why not?”

“You will gather only a handful of Borderkind on your journey. Someone must try to get the word out to others, bring them together, so better to defend ourselves.”

“Where will you bring them?” asked Cheval.

“Why, here, of course,” Smith said. He lowered his gaze and the brim of his hat cast his face in shadow. “The people of the Gorge may not like it, but this is the safest place. The Hunters will come eventually, as has already been stated, but if ever there was a place to stand and fight, this is it.”

Coyote uttered a dry laugh. “In that case, I’ll be leaving.”

Kitsune sniffed. “Coward.”

“I prefer the term ‘survivor,’ if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind,” she said.

“Nevertheless, I’ll be taking my leave. My path is not with you. With any of you.”

For a moment they all looked at him. Even Blue Jay seemed disgusted by Coyote’s cowardice, and he had been quick to embrace his cousin before.

“So be it,” Frost said, glancing around. “What of the rest of you? Will you join us?”

Chorti sat up straighter, his spine popping loudly. He glanced at Cheval Bayard, who nodded, and then both of them faced the winter man again. Chorti’s black eyes gleamed as he uncrossed his arms and placed his massive hands on the table, knife-claws clicking on the wood.

“I stand with you, Frost,” he said, his voice a slow rumble.

Oliver flinched. He hadn’t thought the beast-man capable of speech.

“As do I,” Cheval agreed. She touched two fingers to her forehead, dipping her chin. “The bond is forged, my friends. The Borderkind will live or die, but we are with you until fate decides.”

Tlatecuhtli shifted wetly and a loud croak issued from his mouth. It sounded nothing like either English or the tongue he’d spoken before, but Frost only nodded his head in understanding.

“Your aid would be most welcome,” the winter man told him, before surveying the others gathered round the table again. “It will be the six of us, then.”

A tremor went through Oliver. Here it was, the end of things.

Kitsune raised an eyebrow. “Five, actually.”

Frost turned to her, his confusion evident.

“What are you saying, Kit?” Blue Jay asked.

“I’m going with Oliver.”

They all stared at her, none more so than Oliver. All through the conversation, Kitsune had worn a grave expression. She had barely looked at him. Now she smiled at him across the table and gave a tiny shrug, as if she had no real explanation for her actions. He felt absurdly grateful.

Coyote laughed. “You mean you’re committing suicide.”

With surprising speed, Cheval Bayard slipped from her chair and kicked Coyote with such force that he spilled from his seat onto the ground, his bastard’s grin gone.

“You embarrass us all with your infantile behavior,” Cheval said, the softness gone from her voice and face, a terrible wrath in their place. “Keep quiet, now, or you may find yourself bait for the Hunters.”

Coyote rose, staring at Cheval with death in his eyes.

Blue Jay sighed at his cousin’s behavior and then turned to Kitsune, his wild eyes warm with affection. “You’re certain?”

“I can’t let him go alone.”

Oliver put his palm against his forehead. “Listen, Kit, you’ve done enough. I appreciate it, really, but Frost said he’d get me to Professor Koenig. You guys did that. I know you’ve got more important things to worry about now…”

Kitsune gave a gentle laugh. “If you go back to the Sandman’s castle alone, you’ll die.”

“Don’t have a lot of faith in me, do you?” he said, the jest in his voice strained.
What are you doing, trying to talk her out of coming along?
he thought.
Don’t be an idiot.

Her expression turned uncertain. “I don’t want you to die, Oliver.”

“That makes two of us.”

In the moment of silence that followed, he realized it had been decided. Kitsune would stay with him. He glanced at Cheval and Chorti, feeling as though he now understood them perfectly well.

Wayland Smith cleared his throat. “Still suicide. Coyote’s a fool and a coward, but that doesn’t make him wrong. The two of you haven’t a chance of defeating the Sandman on your own. You’re going to need help.”

Oliver opened his hands, at a loss. “Any suggestions?”

“I have one,” Frost said.

Once again, he claimed all of the attention in the room simply with the tone of his voice. All eyes upon him, Frost turned to Oliver.

“You know some of us have many aspects, different legends from around the world. We are separate beings, and yet aspects of the same legend. Kin in far more than blood.”

Blue Jay snapped his fingers. As he shifted in his chair, the air around him blurred blue and there came the sound of rustling feathers. “I see where you’re going.”

“As do I,” Cheval said, delicate fingers playing with the lace collar of her dress. “The Dustman.”

Oliver frowned. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Nor I,” Kitsune said.

Frost nodded, his enthusiasm for the idea increasing. “The legend is English, I believe. Not as well known in modern times as the Sandman. But the Dustman is Borderkind as well, and just as powerful.”

“But he doesn’t go around murdering children and ripping out their eyes?” Oliver ventured.

“No, he doesn’t.” Wayland Smith smiled. “That’s an excellent idea, Frost. If the Dustman could be convinced to help—”

“Yeah,” Oliver interrupted, “but how do I do that? How do I even find him?”

Blue Jay put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “You sleep, my friend.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“According to the legend, the Dustman is a nursery spirit. Which means you’d need to be in a nursery, with a child,” Wayland Smith said.

Cheval Bayard seemed to notice Oliver for the very first time. There was something odd about her long face, almost equine.

“You might want to be in England at the time,” she suggested.

“Why not?” Oliver said. “It’s on the way. I just wish there was a quicker way to get to Collette. It’s a long trip back to the Truce Road.”

Wayland Smith leaned over the table, staring at them intently. “But of course there’s a quicker way. The Sandman’s castle doesn’t exist in only one location. It’s in many places at once, all of the time. In Euphrasia, both east and west, in Yucatazca, and beyond the Two Kingdoms as well. There is a nearer Sandcastle, to the east, and a Winding Way that will take you there even more swiftly than an ordinary road.”

Kitsune shifted in her chair, studying Smith. “Lost Ones can’t travel the Winding Way. Ordinary men—”

Wayland Smith arched an eyebrow. “You’ve seen this with your own eyes, little cousin?”

“No. But I have heard—”

“It is your best and fastest course, whether the Winding Way will take you there or not. You know how to reach it, from the Orient Road?”

Kitsune nodded, brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“Well, then,” Smith said, as though the matter was settled. And apparently it was, for Kitsune did not argue further.

Oliver sat back and glanced around, pleased to have a plan, and to know that he was not going to be traveling alone after all. He could not recall ever feeling as grateful to anyone as he did to Kitsune at that moment. Yet when he looked at Blue Jay, and then at Frost, he felt a terrible loss.

Frost had brought him into this, but purely by accident. They had relied upon one another, entrusted each other with their lives. They had become, Oliver believed, friends. It was going to be difficult to say good-bye.

“I just wanted to say—” he began.

Coyote shouted and leaped onto the table. The Borderkind were all in motion at once. Chairs crashed over as they stood, ready to defend themselves. Oliver pushed himself away from the table, chair legs scraping the floor, and he reached to his waist, only to find that he’d left the sword in his room.

At the end of the table, Chorti threw his arms up and bared his razor-blade teeth in a snarl as he flashed his claws, ready.

But it wasn’t the wild man that Coyote was after. The only one of them who had barely moved was Tlatecuhtli. The frog-thing began to chatter in his terrible, guttural tongue. The rangy Coyote dove at the frog, fur growing on the back of his neck, bristling along his arms. His jaw elongated, bones cracking as it became a snout filled with wicked teeth.

The frog-thing tensed as though it was about to leap.

Coyote struck it with his body, drove it down to the floor, and then thrust his snout into its fleshy neck. He tore Tlatecuhtli’s throat out, spilling bright green ichor onto the floor, spraying his muzzle with the swamp-stinking stuff.

“What are you doing?” Blue Jay cried.

“Take him!” Frost snapped.

Chorti was already moving. The massive beast-man grabbed Coyote by the arms in an iron grip. Coyote thrashed but could not free himself.

“You idiots! Don’t you pay attention?” Coyote howled. “The frogs. Stop them!”

Oliver moved toward Cheval, thinking to pull her away from danger. As he darted forward, he saw the slit in the frog-thing’s sickly pale belly—vertical lips that disgorged a small frog, no larger than his hand. And then another. And a third.

They were headed for the door, others for the windows. Several hopped toward the darkening corners of the room, searching for an exit that way.

“It’s a spy!” Oliver shouted. “Don’t you understand? You can’t let them get away! He heard everything!”

It was chaos. Utter, disgusting chaos.

In the end, they thought they had managed to destroy all of the traitorous Borderkind’s spawn, but they were not certain. Not certain at all. Even if the Nagas had not ordered them to leave in the morning, they would not have been able to risk remaining in Twillig’s Gorge longer.

At dawn, they had to leave.

Though he had slain Tlatecuhtli for them, and in doing might well have spared them a confrontation with the Hunters, the rest of the Borderkind shunned Coyote as the meeting drew to a close. He bid a somber farewell to Blue Jay, ignoring the others, and was the first to leave the tavern.

Chorti and Cheval agreed to meet Frost and Blue Jay in the foyer of the inn at sunup, then departed. Wayland Smith promised Kitsune and Oliver that he would return an hour before dawn to see them off, and then he also took his leave.

At the bottom of the stairs, Oliver and his companions gathered, perhaps for the last time.

“I want to thank you all,” he began.

Frost tilted his head, a smile on his sharply angled features. Outside, dusk had arrived, and it was a fading light that gleamed on his icy form now.

“I believe we’re beyond debt or gratitude now, Oliver,” Frost said, and his blue-white, frozen diamond eyes narrowed. “We are comrades now, aren’t we? After all we’ve been through. Comrades, come what may. We will be parted for a time, but wherever we may go, we are brothers in arms.”

Oliver could not speak. The winter man was not one for sentiment, and he found himself absurdly touched by Frost’s words.

Blue Jay clapped him on the shoulder. “Until dawn, Oliver. Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

“Blue Jay, a word, if you will,” Frost said.

“About our recruits, I assume,” the trickster said.

Frost nodded and the two of them drifted back toward the tavern. Others had begun to enter the inn and head in that direction. There might not be many visitors in Twillig’s Gorge, but that did not translate into a shortage of patrons for the tavern.

“Shall we?” Kitsune said, gesturing toward the stairs.

“Absolutely,” Oliver said. “I’m tired enough to just go to sleep right on the steps.”

“I think that might be frowned upon.”

They smiled at one another and started up the stairs. As they reached the landing on the third floor, Oliver reached out to take her hand.

“Kit, wait.”

One eyebrow raised, she turned to face him, jade eyes flashing with curiosity. Her cloak swayed around her, soft copper fur brushing his arm.

“I just wanted to say…I mean, you don’t know how much it means—”

Kitsune reached up to touch his face, then darted her head in and kissed him once, quickly, on the mouth. He’d never felt lips so soft, never smelled anything as wonderful as her scent.

She pulled back and watched him, one corner of her mouth lifted.

For several seconds, he only stood there stupidly. Then he shook his head. “Kit, you know…when this is all over, I’m going home. This isn’t my world. Julianna’s waiting for me. She
is
home, for me.”

A glimpse of sadness flashed in her eyes, but her smile never wavered.

“Go to bed, Oliver,” she said.

Kitsune walked down the hall and disappeared into her room, leaving him standing by himself in the corridor.

His skin prickled as though he was surrounded by static electricity. When she had kissed him, and stood so near, the temptation had been powerful. Oliver could not deny that Kitsune stirred desire in him. She would have had such an effect on any man. Everything about her was magical; but, in the world of the legendary,
everything
was magical. He reminded himself of that now.

All his life, Oliver had believed in magic, in things beyond the scope of human understanding. No matter what peril it had brought him, he reveled in the discovery that he had been right all along. And yet the more he saw of magical creatures and enchanted lands, the more he longed for the simpler magics of the mundane world.