The browsers were just as unlikely a collection as the periodicals, everything from be-hatted and veiled fairy women who looked like they'd been flown in from a remake of A Passage to India to a group of talking hedgehogs all wearing what appeared to be matching rugby shirts and carrying pennants and coolers, shoving and arguing good-naturedly while one of their number bought a bag of salted grubs.
"You're looking around too much," Applecore hissed in his ear. "Walk faster. You're on your way somewhere."
He had hesitated in front of a magazine rack, staring at something called Aodh's Harp — he figured that of the two kinds of periodicals he generally liked, in a land of women who always wore head-to-toe clothing he was probably going to have better luck with music magazines — but he realized she was right. Thinking about how little he knew here made him feel hopeless and twisted that skewer of homesickness in his guts again. It was one thing to make him up to look a bit more like a fairy, another thing entirely to expect him to pull it off. It was like dumping an ice cream vendor into a particle physics conference and telling him to fake it. If all he had to do was sit and look like he knew what was happening — well, maybe. But ask him to get up and discuss quarks? Disaster.
"Track Twelve," Applecore said as she led him out of the magazine store and onto the concourse. They were half a dozen storefronts down from the tea shop, which reduced the chance of someone spotting them coming out. Applecore quickly found a group of people moving generally toward the tracks and Theo wrapped the crowd around him like a cloak.
I guess I should be grateful everyone else here isn't Applecore's size. Then I'd really have trouble blending in. He saw no sign of the sprite's trio of rough-lookin' fellas, and for a moment wondered if Rufinus might not be the more sensible after all. Why would anyone send some kind of professional fairy detectives after a know-nothing mortal? Maybe the whole thing with that poor Hollyhock guy's heart had been some kind of mistake, nothing to do with Theo at all. He basked for a moment in the warmth of the idea, although he didn't really believe it. After all, somebody had sent that dead thing after him.
Applecore hissed at him. "Over here! I've just seen 'em!"
His heart now bumping along quite quickly, he let his winged companion lead him to a sheltered space just across from Track Eleven, between a pillar and a little windowed kiosk with the name Ariel's, a spot where he would be out of obvious sight while she went to investigate. Theo tried to look as though he were reading the advertising in the windows carefully. The kiosk sold what he at first thought were waffles, but after a while spent watching the hairnetted brownies handing out the little bundles wrapped in waxed paper, Theo decided their product was some kind of pre-processed frozen honeycomb dessert.
Something touched his ear. He jumped.
"Don't do that!" Applecore said in a strained whisper. "Just stand still! Look through the window and out the door on the far side. See?"
He did. Twenty steps on the other side of the kiosk, three dark, lanky figures stood by a bench watching people go by without being obvious about it. Even though their faces were mostly shaded by their hats, he could see the suggestion of something pale and shiny-wet between brim and collar, a sandcrab gleam.
"Oh, my God."
"Just stay here. The train won't board for another few minutes, but we may be all right. They're looking down the other way so they don't know we're already past 'em." She settled on his shoulder. Her presence was oddly but unquestionably comforting. "Hollow-men."
"Hollow-men? What does that mean?"
"They're a sort of troll. Underground folk. Man-stealers, they used to be, when their caves still opened in your world. They're good at what they do and they keep their mouths shut. Someone's paying a pretty penny for you, boyo."
"Jesus! What does everyone want with me? I'm just a guy!"
"Ssshhh." Her tone was more urgent now. "There's Tansy's cousin. Bloody eejit certainly took his time."
Theo started to say something, but the hollow-men abruptly slid away from the bench and moved toward Rufinus, smooth as wheeling sharks. They vanished for a moment into the crowd at the edge of the railheads, then closed in behind him and on either side as the young fairy reached Track Ten. He looked at one of them without seeming to notice, but then his head swung to the other side and he stopped. The hollow-men quickly surrounded him at arm's length. For a moment no one seemed to do much of anything: the foursome could have been chance acquaintances chatting about the dodginess of railway schedules. The creatures' chins were close to their chests and their faces were mostly hidden by collars and hats, but Theo felt sure they were talking to weft-Daisy, because the alarmed and cautious look on his face was becoming something else, an expression almost of contempt.
"Call for help, you daft fool!" Applecore said urgently but quietly. For a confusing second, Theo thought she was speaking to him.
Instead, Rufinus weft-Daisy turned abruptly and began to walk along the concourse. The trio of trolls walked with him, surrounding him. One leaned close and whispered in Rufinus' ear; the fairy stopped and lifted his valise in both hands.
He's pulling that blade, Theo realized, but in the instant it took for the thought to form the black figures had already folded around weft-Daisy like a gloved fist. Rufinus slumped a little, as though he had suddenly grown dizzy. The hollow-men helped him walk a few steps toward the bench where they had originally been waiting and let him sit down there. They leaned together briefly, then turned and glided toward the tea shop in loose formation.
"What… what happened?"
"Stay here, Theo. Don't make a sound!" Applecore dove from his shoulder to floor level and shot away. He had one brief glimpse of her slaloming around the legs of other station patrons, then he thought he could see her hovering beside weft-Daisy, who still sat on the bench with his mouth open as though he were the recipient of stunning news.
Which, in a way, he had been.
Moments later Applecore dropped back onto Theo's shoulder from nowhere, making him jump again so that he bumped his nose against the Ariel's kiosk window. A pair of young goblins sharing a honeycomb looked up at him in amusement.
"He's dead," she whispered.
"What?"
"When you're not alive anymore! Dead!"
"I know what it means!" Panic rose higher now, threatening to choke him. What kind of world was this? "How can he be dead? He had charms or something! What happened?"
"Cathedral knife, I think — no charm can stop one of those. They opened up his belly — he's got a lapful of his own guts. Terrible." Her crisp words hid her own shock and fear, but not completely. "And they took his case, too. He's just sitting there. Someone will notice any moment."