It produced a strange pang in his gut. “You think you can run away from Nadrett?”
“Not run away, no…” Cyma’s expression darkened. “I know what Nadrett is like. But I’ve done what he asked of me, and settled my debt, and now—well, I must look to the future, mustn’t I?”
It echoed Dead Rick’s own thoughts, and made the cramp in his gut worse. “Where?”
She laid a sly finger alongside her nose. “Wouldn’t you like to know. But I know better than to say anything; I don’t want anyone stealing my place. Keep the bread, Dead Rick, with my compliments. Use it to buy your own way free of that dreadful fellow.”
The pain was like a spike through his innards. If only I could.
He mumbled thanks to Cyma for the bread and beat a retreat before his bitterness could overwhelm him. Making his way deeper into the warren of the Goblin Market, he sought out the one thing even scarcer than bread: solitude.
The corridor he went to had once branched off to the left, but the buckling of that delicate arch had brought the stone crashing in, closing the way to anything bigger than a mouse. There was a hob approaching from the other direction as Dead Rick neared that collapse, a surly Irish fellow who did the occasional odd job for Lacca, another Goblin Market boss. The skriker leaned against the wall perhaps ten feet from the fallen stones and dug through the pockets of his trousers, as if looking for something in their empty depths, until the hob had turned the corner and gone into the room beyond.
Then Dead Rick leapt for the rockfall.
It looked solid, and for the most part it was. But an agile fellow could crawl atop one of the larger blocks, and from there it was apparent that the mass behind had left a small gap, just big enough for someone Dead Rick’s size to squirm through. Then he slid on his stomach across a polished bit of marble that had miraculously survived the collapse unmarred, and out into the space beyond.
It was pitchy black, but his hands knew their business. He dropped a dark cloth over the hole he’d come in by, weighted its bottom edge with a thick piece of wood, then found and opened the box. Out floated a trio of faerie lights. Mindless things, they didn’t object to a bit of confinement, and that was the only way he could keep them from wandering off in his absence—wandering, and betraying his secret refuge.
By the standards of the Goblin Market, it was comfort. He had blankets and a few cushions, and what odds and ends amused him but weren’t worth much in the Market. Everything of real value was beneath a loose stone in the floor, toward the back of this space, where the rest of the collapse had blocked the passage completely.
He inspected it, out of nagging fear. A small engagement ring, taken from a dying spinster, holding her unwavering hope that her fiancé would return from his journey to India. A mermaid’s tear, like a lustrous blue-green pearl. A carte de visite photograph of a woman. To that he added five pieces of bread: the debt Cyma had told him to keep.
Five pieces. It was enough to see him well clear of London, and Nadrett’s influence. Then he could make his way across the countryside, skirting the churches and railways, until he found some other court to take him in.
But it would mean leaving the one thing he truly desired—the one thing no hidden cache could buy for him, be it ten times this large.
A voice whispered through the air around him, dry as dust. “How badly do you want it back?”
Dead Rick shot to his feet and flattened his shoulders against the wall. His hackles rose, and a growl rumbled instinctively in his throat. But there was no one to direct it at.
“Snarl all you like,” the voice said, amused. “And when you feel you’ve defended your territory enough, then consider my question, and answer it.”
Enough? How could he defend his territory at all? Dead Rick’s ears were alive to the slightest sound; his nose caught every scent out of the air. No one had crawled over and between and under the stones to his refuge, not even one of the little winged sprites that sometimes flew messages for other fae. No one was hiding anywhere in the small space. He was completely alone—and yet somehow this voice was there with him.
Fae had many strange talents; separating voice from body was hardly the most impressive. But how had the speaker found this place?
“Get out of my fucking ’ome,” he spat, hands curling into useless fists. “I ain’t answering no questions from no faceless bastard. You want to talk to me, you do it somewhere else.”
Unruffled, the voice agreed, “I could do that. But you would still know your sanctuary had been violated—and you would not get what you want. So once again, I put it to you: How badly do you want it back?”
Beneath the anger, the instinct to chase off the intruder, fear stirred. Dead Rick said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes darted about as he spoke, as if they would be any use. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and there were no scents to help him. But an accent, yes—the refined tone of a gentleman. And the condescending chuckle of one. “You’re too honest a hound for that, Dead Rick. But if you will not answer a question, then perhaps you will respond to an offer. Very welclass="underline" I can give your memory back to you.”
“Liar,” Dead Rick snarled, coming off the wall as if there were something he could fight.
“Why assume so? Because Nadrett keeps it locked away? This is the Goblin Market; such things change hands all the time, by fair means or foul. Or perhaps you are suspicious of charity. I assure you, I want something in return. And so we come again to the original question, which is how much your memory is worth to you.”
Had the speaker been in the room, he would have known the answer to that. Every muscle in Dead Rick’s body was rigid with longing. Sweep aside the accumulated dust and rubbish of his time in the Goblin Market, and underneath lay a blank slate—no, that was too pleasant a comparison. Those newer memories were the scab over a wound, concealing the gaping, bloody void beneath. An unhealing wound, robbing him of everything: his past, his self—even his name, until Cyma had given it back to him.
How much would he pay, to regain what Nadrett had taken from him?
Wariness helped him regain control of his voice. “You’ve already got some price in mind, or you wouldn’t ’ave made the offer.”
“Very observant. Yes, I have my price, and what’s more, I think you will find it congenial. I want you to turn on your master.”
Nadrett. The hand on the leash, the voice calling him dog and making the word hurt. It took a lot to make a hound turn on his master, but Nadrett had passed that bar years ago. But—“If I could kill ’im, I would’ve done it already,” Dead Rick said.
“How fortunate for you, then, that death was not what I had in mind. In fact, at present I would prefer him to remain alive; his demise would not profit me. Not yet, at least. But once I have what I want…” The voice laughed. “Then I will slip the chain from around your neck, and watch you tear out his throat.”
The mere thought called the taste of blood into his mouth. To hunt Nadrett through the night garden, until the bastard’s legs and wind gave out and he fell to the ground, and then to leap upon him with teeth bared…
Or just to shoot him, or knife him in the back. Dead Rick honestly didn’t care how Nadrett died. Just so long as he got his memories back.
But, as the speaker had said, this was the Goblin Market. And nobody here could be trusted. “You expect me to risk my neck for you—when I don’t even know who you are?”
Whatever face was on the other end of that voice, Dead Rick could imagine it smiling. “Not at present, no. We will enter into this alliance one careful step at a time, each watching the other for signs of betrayal. For now, what I ask is no particular risk. Merely information, that I want you to find for me.”