"But not the Hollyhock clan. Tansy's right about that — who knows how Hellebore and Thornapple and that lot found out about that young fella coming to the commune to escort you — the one who wound up with his heart in a box? But they did, and in times like this it's usually an inside job."
He couldn't help smiling at the phrase. "You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinker Bell."
She scowled. "Call me that name again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe — from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?"
He shut his mouth.
"That's good, then. So we're not going to talk about this on the bus — if a goblin can hear us talking, so can a lot of other folk. We're going to get on and off the buses a couple of times, but in the long run," she moved in close and lowered her voice to a whisper, "we're heading for Daffodil House. There's someone there who'll want to meet you, and luckily it's someone who doesn't like Hellebore and his Chokeweeds very much."
If it had been something past ten at night by Theo's reckoning when they visited the comb, it was approaching midnight when they got off the last bus. Theo stood shivering on the sidewalk beside a wide thoroughfare — the night air had turned sharply cold — while Applecore sniffed the breeze. "I don't think we're being followed."
"Followed?" He looked around at the silent walls and dark windows. Actually, he realized, there weren't that many windows, at least at ground level. "There isn't anyone here at all."
"This part of Gloaming District's like that. No restaurants, no night life, just government buildings and some of the bigger house-towers. Once everyone's in for the night it's pretty quiet. Let's go."
She led him down a street full of tall buildings that, like everything else in this city of alien shapes and colors, were both like and unlike what he knew. Many of the Faerie office complexes were squat structures like old castles, with walls around the outside that hid all but the tops of the buildings within, and although they were covered with bright spotlights and had quite modern looking guard stations in the massive gates, they did not look much different from the medieval districts of his world that were still inhabited. Theo remembered seeing plenty of similar arrangements during his one trip to Europe with Cat: museum-quality stonework with spanking new technology bolted right onto ancient structures.
The family compounds — the "house-towers," as Applecore named them, were a bit different. For one thing, while the office buildings averaged five or six stories, the house-towers ranged anywhere from twice to ten times that amount. One of the first they passed, a huge structure lit by upward-slanting footlights which Applecore told him was Snapdragon House, was a good example of the type: it was not cylindrical but polyhedronal, and although it had regular rows of windows on the upper floors, there were none at all within fifty feet of the ground, probably for security: the only entrance to the building seemed to be through a gatehouse set well back from the street, its massive doorway set deep in a thick wall. But although there were few windows in the first hundred feet, the tower was not without decoration: the windows were a number of different sizes and shapes, and most of the available wall space was covered with ornamentation as complex as the gargoyles and carved saints of a Gothic cathedral. Even in the glare of the spotlights Theo couldn't quite make out the nature of the carvings, but they seemed to run across the side of the tower he could see in slanted bands, as though the whole thing created a single picture spiraling around the structure.
He asked Applecore about the decorations.
"Goblins gettin' killed, mostly," she explained. "Snapdragons made their names and their fortune in the last Goblin War. You should see Phlox House. They were big in the wars with the giants. They've got carved giant heads and shoulders built into the foundations — them big fellas look like they're not having a real good time holding up the building, either." Her voice took on a thoughtful tone. "At least I think they're carved."
She led him across a wide expanse of trimmed lawns and meandering paths, all quite empty in the pale, bluish light of the streetlamps. "Hoarfrost Park," she told him.
"Do we have to watch out for werewolves?" he asked nervously.
"I think they've just planted the new wolfbane — you see those hedges? They take better care of downtown then they do the parts where us working folk live."
Keeping his ears open for the sounds of something lupine in the shrubbery — because who knew what you could expect from disgruntled gardeners? Theo could just imagine them planting ivy instead of wolfbane by mistake — Theo slowed to look at a statue. It was the first he'd been close enough to see. It was of some strange, silvery metal, and seemed to represent a fairy lord in full armor, holding his swan-winged helmet in the crook of his elbow. He looked out across the park in a heroic pose that Theo had seen on dozens of statues back in his own world.
"Who's this?"
"How should I know?" Applecore flew in impatient circles. "The first Lord Rose, or maybe Speedwell, one of that shower. Come on."
Theo stared a moment longer at the sharp-featured face. If the subject of the statue was not one of the most arrogant creatures that ever breathed, the artist had done him a disservice.
"… Cold," said a weary, infinitely mournful voice. Theo jumped. "So… cold…"
He looked around, heart pounding. "My God! That statue just talked to me!" The voice had seemed miles away and yet right inside his head.
"No, it didn't." Applecore was beside him now. "Come along."
"It did! It talked to me! It said 'Cold!' "
"That wasn't the statue. See, when they cut down what was left of the forest that was here to make the park, the tree-nymphs… well, their trees were all destroyed. Some of them got into the statues as sort of a protest, but it didn't do any good. They're still in there." She shook her head. "Can't be nice for them."
"When did all this happen?" He was still shivering — the voice had sounded so lost, so miserable.
"Least fifty years, must have been, maybe a hundred. Nobody cared. It's sad, I suppose, but what can you do? Now hurry up."
He could not help looking back over his shoulder at the gleaming, silvery figure. Fifty years or more! He might only have fancied it, but he thought he could still hear a faint, miserable echo as he caught up to Applecore. "How can anyone put up with that? It's… it's horrible!"
"Nobody who lives around here stands next to 'em long enough to hear. You just learn. Anyway, here we are."
They looked down from the top of the grassy hill onto the edge of the park and a huge complex, the biggest he'd seen yet, perhaps four city blocks square, so wide that the whole of Hoarfrost Park was its front garden. The main tower was large, perhaps as much as thirty or forty stories high, but it was not the tallest he'd seen — the Snapdragon house-tower and a couple of others had been higher. However, three of the four corners of the complex also held towers that were each about half the main tower's height, so that the landscaped lot looked something like the gathering of Giza pyramids.
Like a cemetery full of monuments. The encounter with the dryad had upset Theo deeply — he could still hear its voice, the exhausted disbelief of an abandoned child.
"Daffodil House," Applecore announced. "Although really that's only the center tower-house. The other towers are Iris, Jonquil, Narcissus, and that low one's the conference center." The fourth corner, the only one without a tower, was filled by a sprawling complex of low buildings.