The Borderkind (38 page)

“Oh, yes, by all—” the Sandman began.

His voice cut off. Something shifted in his eyes, in his form. Beneath the cloak he wore, things moved and shifted. Puffs of sand erupted from his back and chest and mouth and he started to twist in upon himself like a dog chasing his tail. For a moment his features blurred, and when the sand stopped swirling enough to make out what they were all seeing, Oliver realized he now wore a bowler hat.

The Dustman and the Sandman had merged and become one, and now the Dustman turned toward Oliver.

“Now, while I am ascendant.”

Oliver and Collette raced at him. The Sword of Hunyadi flashed through the night air and cleaved the Dustman’s head from his shoulders. It fell to the ground and burst into a cloud of sand that eddied in the mountain breeze. The rest of his body seemed to have frozen, as though sculpted from sand. Collette began to tear at it, and even as she did it crumbled at her touch.

The Dustman collapsed, sand spilling across the ground, half burying the bones of Detective Halliwell, until no form remained at all. Only sand. Only dust.

“How did you…?” one of the soldiers said.

Oliver turned and saw it was the woman who had chased after Halliwell and tried to save him. She wore the insignia of a captain in Hunyadi’s service.

“That’s just not possible,” she said. “They were legends.”

Collette leaned against him. Oliver put his arm around her, helping to hold her up with his free hand. In the other, his sword hung low, point digging into the soft sand.

He could not claim to understand exactly what had just happened. Had the Dustman destroyed his brother, or did he and Collette really have some kind of magic in them, some legendary power?

Oliver met the captain’s gaze, unflinching. “This world is full of impossible things.”

The entire city of Palenque was a maze, a circular labyrinth of dead-end streets and alleys that twisted back upon themselves. The architects who had conceived it were brilliant, and the king who’d ordered its construction ruthless, for the entire city had been created as protection for the palace that lay at its center. Enemies who intended to destroy the palace or usurp the king would become lost in the maze of stone and wood. Each long, curving street of Palenque looked, with its balconies and lanterns and white-washed walls, much like the others.

Ingenious. But it also revealed how little value the king placed upon the lives of his subjects. Instead of building walls to protect his people, the founder of the city had used those very people as his walls.

Tonight, they showed King Mahacuhta the same courtesy.

Night had fallen, and though the city flickered with electric lights and gas lamps alike, Frost felt invigorated by the darkness. The sun and heat had been a constant drain upon his strength and power. Now only clear black velvet hung in the sky, punctured with starry pinpoints and a sliver moon. The heat of the day seeped away quickly, and while the night was still warm, he felt much improved.

“Not exactly the reception we were expecting,” Blue Jay whispered beside him.

Frost nodded intently, not returning the trickster’s smile. Caution demanded they take care, no matter how cooperative the citizens of Palenque seemed.

“You thought the people would attack us?”

Blue Jay shot him an odd look, punctuated by the rasp of denim on denim and the slap of his boot heels on the street. “Attack? I figured the whole city would be villagers with torches. If Ty’Lis is really the guy behind the Hunters, why would he just let us walk up to his front door?”

The winter man did not reply. This was precisely the question he had been mulling over, and as yet he had not come up with an answer.

The streets of Palenque were alive with life. It was, after all, the capital of Yucatazca, one of the most powerful and most alive cities in all the world. Frost did not eat, but even he marveled at the mélange of aromas that filled the labyrinthine streets: scents of cooking meats and spices and fruits and boiling fish stews. Distant sounds of engines and of the hoofbeats of horses carried to them along the curved alleys and roads of that circular maze city as they made their way toward the palace at its center.

Along the way, as though their route had been announced earlier, hundreds of people gathered to watch them pass. Some of them were grim-faced and anxious, but others cheered and whistled in support as he and Blue Jay, Grin, Li, and Cheval passed by. The strange Borderkind who had met them at the outskirts of the city accompanied them, as did dozens of Lost Ones. Others fell in with the parade as they marched through the streets, all of them headed toward the palace in search of answers.

Music and singing, shouts and laughter came from many of the buildings they passed—inns and drafthouses and restaurants alive with the lives of ordinary people who had toiled all day in the sun.

Some of the people seemed troubled by their passing and strode quickly away, not wishing to be anywhere near the trouble that the Borderkind might cause. Frost felt disgust roil in him. If there was danger to ordinary people in simply being in the presence of Borderkind, the Hunters ought to be accountable, not the Borderkind themselves. But regardless of who was at fault, just being near Frost and the others could have been fatal.

Yet on this night, when they were so close to their goal, there were no attacks and no resistance. Frost had seen very few of the legendary in the march through Palenque, and those he had seen had been mostly in shadows, standing in arched doorways or watching from windows and quickly disappearing behind curtains when they realized they’d been seen.

The tide had turned.

The Lost Ones had heard rumors that the Legend-Born had been discovered, that they might be within the Two Kingdoms already, and that somehow this was connected to the Myth Hunters’ slaughter of the Borderkind.

Frost knew the truth, but he would not speak of it.

Not now.

First, Ty’Lis must be stopped. The Hunters must be recalled and punished for their savagery. Those Borderkind who still lived must be saved. Only then would he answer the Lost Ones’ questions about the Legend-Born.

Cheval and Li hung back, both of them grieving, unable to enjoy the camaraderie of the southern Borderkind who had joined them. But Grin caught up to Blue Jay and Frost, took a glance at the winter man, and turned to the trickster instead.

“Right, so what do you think, Blue?” Leicester Grindylow asked. “D’ye think we’ve killed all the Hunters?”

Blue Jay clapped a hand on Grin’s shoulders and tossed back his hair, feathers dancing in the wind. “Not by half, friend. Not by half.”

Grin frowned, once again looking from Blue Jay to Frost. “No? Then why do you reckon they’re not here trying to kill us? Not like we’d be hard to find, is it?”

“I can think of three reasons,” Blue Jay said.

Frost raised an eyebrow, icy mist steaming from his eyes. He said nothing, only continued walking along with his companions, blocking out the sounds of the crowd to listen to the trickster speak.

“First, their master has been moving in secret all of this time, acting without the knowledge of his king or the support of the people, on some kind of personal vendetta against the Borderkind. The people don’t like that sort of lying, bullshit politics. If the Hunters tried to attack us here, it’d be wholesale slaughter. Lots of people would die. That would make it even worse. See, if Ty’Lis is behind all of this, you’re talking a major diplomatic incident here. Atlantis is neutral, remember? They brokered the truce that created the Two Kingdoms. People might blame Atlantis. Worse yet, they might blame King Mahacuhta, and kings tend to frown on their advisors doing things without permission that could cause their subjects to rise up in anger.

“Second, Mahacuhta may have just killed the bastard already and saved us the trouble. Even if we assume he’s been blind and deaf to all that has transpired, kept in the dark by Ty’Lis and his other advisors, by now he’s likely to have heard what the Hunters have been up to. If he’s traced it back to Ty’Lis…well, you see where that’s going. Also, Ty’Lis might have just run off. The pricks who do this sort of thing, secret genocide orders, conspiracies, that sort of thing…they’re cowards. They’re far more likely to run than to fight.”

Up ahead, the road narrowed. They had been curving southwest, the palace to their right. There were shops and homes on either side now, but for the most part the whitewashed stone and the gas lamps looked exactly the same as any other part of the city. A butcher’s and a small bookshop jutted a bit onto the road and after that it was as though the walls were closing in. In this more residential street, dwarf trees grew in front of the buildings and the windows were mostly dark.

The small army that had gathered around them had to stretch out into a thinner line, only four or five across, to walk this way. Up ahead, the jaguar-men who had been the scouts and guides and vanguard of their march paused and sniffed the air.

They turned north along an alley.

Frost frowned, the ice around his eyes cracking.

How many times would the labyrinth of the city’s design turn them away from the direct approach? He could long since have spun himself into a frozen wind, a tiny storm, and gusted toward the palace to find Ty’Lis on his own. That had, in fact, been his plan all along, until they had been met with such a formidable welcome. He’d intended to leave Blue Jay and the others behind to fight whatever enemy tried to block their way, and go up to the palace to face Ty’Lis alone. It would have been best for everyone.

Now the winter man worried that altering his plan might have been an error. The music and the laughter and the spectators had been left behind. Faces watched from windows, but only a few.

“And?” Grin said, staring at Blue Jay. The boggart ambled down the road, long arms nearly dragging on the ground. He seemed entirely caught up in the conversation, and Frost wished he would pay more attention to their surroundings.

Blue Jay paused to touch a damp spot on the road, but then walked on before anyone could collide with him from behind, and before they could lose sight of the jaguar-men as the great cats followed the ever-narrowing alley further northward.

“And what?” the trickster asked, glancing at Frost.

They exchanged a silent but anxious look. The winter man glanced back at Cheval and Li. Cheval Bayard strode along, her silver hair gleaming in the starlight. Several of the Lost Ones walked with her, talking to her quietly, perhaps comforting her. But Li was alone, ignoring the pair of strange vampire serpents that slithered at his side. Much of his clothing had burned away and all over his smooth, ash-gray flesh were large patches of scorched skin, glittering embers. Fully two-thirds of his body seemed to have turned to cinder now, blue-white flames flickering along the surface of his skin. It crackled and flared.

Without the tiger, the Guardian could no longer properly contain the fire within. Even though its strength was diminished, it was consuming him. In time, he would be entirely sculpted of burning embers. What might happen then, Frost did not care to guess.

Li glanced around unhappily, obviously just as concerned about their surroundings as Frost and Blue Jay.

“Three,” Grin said, tapping Blue Jay on the shoulder. “You said there was three reasons you could think of why no one’s tried to stop us getting to the palace. What’s the third?”

Blue Jay moved with a strange grace, there in the narrowing alley, following the jaguar-men. He stepped from side to side, a dark blue blur beneath his arms.

“Hello? What’s the matter?” Grin said, noticing at last that they were troubled.

“The third possibility,” Frost said, answering for Blue Jay. “It may be that there are no Hunters and no soldiers trying to stop us or attack us because those are their orders. Our arrival may all be a part of the plan.”

“Oi, come on, mate,” Grin said, turning to the winter man. “You think this is a trap?”

Blue Jay laughed softly, his eyes wild with mischief. “We’ll know soon enough.”

They followed the jaguar-men until the alley twisted back upon itself once more and they were moving due south, then east, parallel to the center of Palenque again. The alley became so narrow that it was difficult for two of them to walk abreast.

All conversation had ceased. Frost wondered how far back their coterie of Lost Ones and southern Borderkind snaked through the alleys of Palenque, and how vulnerable they all were now.

Then the jaguar-men led them, at last, to a broader avenue. When they stepped out onto the street, they had returned to a city buzzing with nightlife and music. Glasses clinked and laughter came from a nearby bar.

At the far end of the avenue, tall street lamps burned amidst rows of ironwood trees, all of which led to twin sets of high stairs, like those at the pyramid they had passed earlier. At the top of each set of stairs were massive doors, tall enough for gods and monsters.

Mahacuhta’s palace.

Frost hesitated. Perhaps it was not a trap after all. Or perhaps the trap lay within.

Now the Lost Ones and Borderkind who had joined with him gathered around, all eyes upon him, waiting. The winter man did not hesitate. He started down the avenue toward the palace stairs with Blue Jay and Grin on either side. As they approached, Li and Cheval joined them so that all five of the Borderkind who had survived the journey south walked together. Others gathered ahead of them and behind, but seemed to keep away from those five out of respect or, perhaps, fear.

As they neared the palace Frost could make out a dozen guards near the top of each staircase, armed with spears and swords. The sentries stood entirely still, but he was not fool enough to think they were there merely for decoration.

“What is that?” Li asked. The Guardian of Fire raised his ember hands, flame dancing on his fingers. His eyes were tiny infernos.

“What do you see?” Cheval asked.

“Beneath the ironwood trees,” Blue Jay said. “I see them now. What are they?”

Frost glanced around at the crowd with him, wondering at the best path for them to take cover should an attack come now, wondering how many would die in the process. But then he saw what had caught the attention of his comrades. Near the bottom of the right-hand staircase, outside the dome of light shed by the nearest gas lamp, amidst the trees, three figures stood entirely still as though they were iron-woods themselves.