Midwinter

When they emerged from the tower, it was night again, and Silverdun was waiting for them, locked in a heated discussion with Purane-Es about the equipment they'd taken from the stables.

"Where have you been?" said Silverdun, annoyed. "It's almost time to go!"

"Hand me a silver khoum," said Mauritane, holding out his hand.

Silverdun knit his brow in confusion but produced the coin from his purse anyway, handing it over.

Mauritane studied the impression on the worn old coin. There, surrounded by a wreath of silver holly leaves, was the familiar face of the Lady of Twin Birch Torn, missing only her knitting to make the image complete.

"Hmph," said Mauritane, handing the coin back to Silverdun. "Take whatever Purane-Es deigns to give you and let's get the hell out of this place. We ride in one hour."

three pounds of gold

The prison stables were outside the inner wall, in a part of Crete Sulace that Brian Satterly had never visited. It was a low stone building that might have been a thousand years old for all Satterly knew. Guards and servants hurried across the snow-covered ground between the tower and the stables, stealing clandestine glances at Mauritane and his companions, their curiosity poorly hidden. The stables smelled of melting snow and wet horses and dung and straw.

Satterly stood just inside the stable doors, next to a brazier, watching Mauritane direct the final preparations for their journey. Satterly had heard the phrase "natural born leader" before but had never met anyone who truly fit the description until now. The prison staff who'd directed Mauritane's life since Satterly had arrived at Crete Sulace eighteen months ago now took orders from him as if they'd been doing so all their lives.

As he often had since his arrival in this world, Satterly felt useless and uncomfortable. With the Fae there were any number of social traps you could fall into. The wrong word at the wrong time could enter you into a blood feud; for a commoner (a group into which Satterly fell by default), looking a noble in the eye while he was eating was a justifiable grounds for murder. Accepting a gift from a Fae, under the appropriate circumstances, could make you beholden to the giver for the rest of your life. Of course, nobody could explain to Satterly what the appropriate circumstances were. It was something so basic to Fae culture that it was rendered inexplicable.

As a result, Satterly kept mostly to himself and tried to speak as little as possible. Saying nothing was almost always the right answer for someone in his position. Though the Fae were sometimes curious about the human world and its customs, most simply treated him as an outsider and ignored him completely.

Humans weren't unknown in the Fae world they way that the Fae were in his. Despite the ban on travel between the two worlds, a few managed to make it through from time to time for various illegal ends. It was one of those illegal ends that had landed Satterly here in Faerie.

There were a number of known worlds; Satterly wasn't sure how many. Earth was one of them, Faerie was another. The woman Raieve was from a place called Avalon, which Satterly had heard of but knew little about other than that the Unseelie had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer it a few years back. He'd heard the names of others but they were scarcely more than names: Annwn, Mag Mell, Nibiru, Pathi. Nobody Satterly had met knew anything about them. "Filled with monsters and that," Gray Mave had once opined when Satterly asked him.

In the past, there had been free commerce between Faerie and the human world, known to the Fae as Nymaen-literally the "place of men"-but a treaty between the Seelie and Unseelie had made such travel illegal hundreds of years ago. It was one of the few treaties, Satterly had been told, that had never officially been broken by either party, though Satterly had never learned why or what the purpose of the treaty had been in the first place.

It was difficult for him to believe that two years ago he'd never heard of this place or the Fae people. He now spoke Common every day and had even begun to dream in it. Sometimes lately he'd started to forget the English words for things. With a start, he realized that he was thinking in Common even now.

"Human," said Mauritane, breaking Satterly from his reverie. "Come saddle your horse in the manner you prefer."

Satterly started forward and looked at Mauritane, wincing. "I've never saddled a horse before."

Mauritane's glare said, don't they teach you humans anything? It was a look Satterly had received more times than he could count. But Mauritane only said, "Then have one of the stableboys do it for you. But watch closely, because I don't intend to do it for you on our journey. Every man carries his own weight."