"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."
The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we'd taken into it. The floor was made of those small white octagonal tiles with a line of black tiles running about a foot from either wall. Forty-seven paces from the kitchen, the tunnel widened into a small room. The black tiles formed a complicated Celtic knot in the center of the room. There were passageways that opened across from ours, and one to either side.
We took the one to the right. Here the floor was rough wooden planks that showed the marks of being hand hewn. It creaked a little under Samuel, who was the heaviest of us.
"Eighteen," he said, and there was a yellow door with an old-fashioned key hanging off a hook - the first door we'd seen in the Elphame.
Samuel took the key from the lock and opened the door.
"Doc?" said Gabriel. "What are you doing here?"
"Gabriel." Jesse pushed past Samuel.
Key in hand, Samuel followed her in. Ariana and I brought up the rear.
Gabriel was hugging Jesse. "What are all of you doing here? Did she get you, too?"
The room was white. White stone walls, white ceiling with clear crystals hanging down to light the room. The floors were made of a single slab of polished white marble. There were two beds with white bedding.
The only color in the room came from Gabriel and the man who was lying on one of the beds. He looked dreadful, and I'd never have recognized him if Ariana hadn't whispered his name.
Phin sat up slowly, as if his ribs hurt, and Ariana rushed to kneel beside his bed on one knee.
He frowned at her. "Who?"
"Grandma Alicia," she said.
He looked startled, then he smiled. "Has anyone ever told you that you don't look like anyone's grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?"
"No," said Samuel, who had turned to face the doorway. "It's a trap."
"Welcome to my home," said a familiar dark voice. "I'm so happy you came to call."
The woman who stood in the doorway of the cell was lovely. Her hair was dark smoke, pulled back in a complicated braid composed of many small plaits. It flowed down her back and dragged the ground like an Arabian show horse's tail and set off the porcelain of her skin and the rose of her lips.
She was looking at me. "I am so glad to have you in my home, Mercedes Thompson. I was just trying to call you on my cell when - imagine my surprise - I discovered that you were here. But you did not bring it." Having a fairy queen talking about cell phones almost was enough to make me laugh. Almost.
I raised my chin. By stealth, by strength, by bargain. "I am not such a poor bargainer, fairy queen. If I had brought it, we could not play."
She smiled, and her silver-gray eyes warmed. "By all means," she said. "Let us play."
Chapter 14
"BUT THIS IS NOT THE PROPER PLACE FOR BARGAINING," she said. "Follow me."
Ariana picked up Phin in her arms. Samuel looked at Gabriel.
"I'm okay, Doc," he said. He glanced at Ariana, then looked at me. "Werewolf?" he mouthed.
"No," said Samuel. "That's me. Ariana is fae."
Gabriel jerked his head to Samuel. "You're . . ." And then his face cleared. "That explains a few things . . . Snowball?"
Samuel smiled. "Are you sure you don't need help?"
"Phin's the one who was really hurt," he said. "He's gotten a lot better over the past week, but he didn't start off good."
I gave Gabriel a sharp look, but I supposed it wasn't really important to tell him that he'd only been gone a day, out in the real world - if we didn't get out before Zee had to stop holding the door open, then it really wouldn't matter.
The fairy queen's voice floated through the doorway. "Are you coming?"
Ariana nodded to Samuel, who took point again out the door, following the fairy queen. Ariana went next, and I waved my hand for Gabriel and Jesse to precede me. I took a deep breath, the kind that cleared your mind and lungs before some extreme endeavor - and smelled earth and growing things in this cold marble room.
Only the fairy queen's glamour would work in her Elphame, Zee had said. I paid attention to my nose as we walked down the hall in the wake of the fairy queen.
Question, I thought, as I tried to sniff out the scents that were real from the ones produced by the queen's illusions. If it looks like a hallway, feels like a hallway, and acts like a hallway - is it important to figure out that it isn't a hallway?
But curiosity is very nearly my besetting sin. Gradually, as we walked, the scent of dirt, of the sap of wounded wood, and of something that might have been sorrow grew. I glanced up at the dangling lights and saw tree roots instead of silver wires, and shining rocks instead of gemstones, rocks much like the one Zee had given Ariana. I blinked, and the gems were back, but I didn't believe in them anymore, and they wavered.
I stumbled and looked down, momentarily seeing a root sticking up from a soft dirt floor, then my vision changed and the tiny white tiles, laid flat and even with nothing to trip over, were back.
"Mercy?" Jesse asked. "Are you all right?"
The queen looked back at me, and her face - though still beautiful - was different from the woman she'd been just a few minutes ago. It was elongated from chin to forehead, and her eyelashes were longer than humanly possible without glue and fake eyelashes. Narrow, clear wings, like a damselfly's, poked up from her shoulders. They were too small to lift her body off the ground without magic.
"Fine," I said.