Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(79)

"That sounds . . . simple," I said.

"It could be simple," Ariana told me. "She cannot be expecting visitors - there just aren't very many fae who could open a back entrance into a fairy queen's lair. Thralls will not react to us - they know nothing and are not much more than automata who follow the queen's orders. We may be able to find Phin and Gabriel and leave with them before anyone realizes there is something wrong."

"Should we have brought - " Ariana's fingers touched my lips.

"Best we not talk about what that one so desires in her lair," she told me. "I expect she might hear that. And no. It is powerful, and even if it will not do as she wants, it will still do great harm in the wrong hands."

"All right," I said.

Samuel raised his head. "Best we not talk anymore at all. I'm starting to pick up the scent of people now."

I could smell them, too, once he'd pointed it out. We were coming upon more-traveled ways. The loose dirt of the floor became packed earth, and the roots thinned and were replaced with rough-cut square blocks as the dirt floor became cobbles, and the ceiling rose so Samuel could stand up straight again.

There were already other tunnels joining ours.

I caught the scent before Samuel, but I think it was only because the woman came upon us from behind, and I was walking last. It didn't matter, though, because I only had time to whirl around, and she was upon us.

She wore a torn jacket and filthy jeans and carried a large wooden cutting board in both her hands. She walked right into me and bounced off. When she tried to walk around me, I blocked her a second time.

"Take this to the kitchen," she said, without looking up at me. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, all of her attention on the board she held. Her hair hung in ragged clumps, and there was dirt on her knuckles. Around her neck was a thin silver collar. "The kitchen, child. The kitchen. Take this to the kitchen."

I moved out of her way, and she all but sprinted past us.

"She's not taking care of her thralls," said Ariana disapprovingly.

"Thrall?" asked Jesse.

"Slave," I answered. "You know when someone is enthralled with a movie or a boyfriend - that's from the same root word."

"Follow her," said Ariana. "The kitchen should be at the heart of Elphame."

We jogged after her, passing by a young man in a police uniform, a woman in a jogging suit, and an older woman carrying a steaming teapot, all wearing silver collars, and all moving with unnatural intentness. The floor switched from cobbles to stone tiles, and the ceiling rose again until it was fifteen feet or more above our heads.

The gems that had lit the passage we had been in were lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling from something that could equally well have been fine silver wire or spiderwebs. Whatever it was, it didn't look strong enough to hold them. Samuel's head would hit the lower gemstones once in a while, sending them swinging.

We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set - a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer. I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver . . . or Gabriel Sandoval, either. The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top. People with silver collars were preparing food and drink - and didn't seem to notice our presence at all. The woman we'd followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.

"Excuse me," said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.

"Stir the pot seventy times seven," he said.

"Where are they keeping the prisoners?" Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could. His voice echoed oddly in the room.

Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop. One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel. The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last. He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways. The others, one by one, pointed the same way.

"Forty-seven steps," the oatmeal stirrer said.

"Take the right tunnel," said a man who'd been chopping turnips.

"Eighteen steps and turn," said a girl kneading bread. "The key is on the hook. The door is yellow."

"Do not let them out," said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.

"Resume your tasks," said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.

"I think that's the creepiest thing I've ever seen," said Jesse. "Are we just going to leave these people here?"

"We're going to get Gabriel out and Phin," said Ariana. "And then we'll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls. Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that. In the Elphame, she rules utterly."

"What if she's enthralled Gabriel?"

"She won't have," said Ariana positively. "She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences. And my Phin is protected against such a thing."