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.