Chapter Two
Two
He told Irene Rush two weeks, because he had to tell her something. The truth was he had no idea how long it might take to locate her daughter. But in his experience, this was not what parents wanted to hear. They needed parameters for the agony. They needed the promise it would end, and soon.
“What should I do?” she asked in a firmer voice than she’d so far shown him. With the changeling dragged back to its room by the older woman and reimprisoned there, she seemed to have composed herself a little, gathered some fragments of previously unsuspected resolve.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said truthfully.
“You must understand, the Huldu are nothing like us. They are not a unified society, they’re not even a unified tribe, especially not in this part of the country.
These are not coordinated raids, authorized by some Faerie parliament or king—all that’s a fantasy of the romances and the pulps and that bloody Maynard Dalton. ”
“I—I thought that Mr. Dalton…He is a—a psychical researcher, is he not? An expert on Faerie and the Forest?”
“Russell Maynard Dalton is a charlatan. A purveyor of sensationalist lies and half-truths for profit. Frankly, the man should be jailed for the false theories and conspiracies he spouts to the—” Duncan stopped himself, held down his temper with an effort.
He’d been about to say the needy and the credulous.
Dealing with the changeling and Mrs. Rush’s tears had churned him up.
He smoothed his voice out, played the expert.
“There are some semblances of an ancient Faerie kingdom in the south and west of England, parts of Wales, that much is true. And something similar in parts of Scotland, some preeminent warlords here and there. But even these are remnants, rotted through with the centuries the Huldu have been in hiding. And here in the north of England, there is not even that. It’s a mess of clans, sparring and squabbling, trying to fill the new forest spaces.
Things are in flux. If I had to guess, Mrs. Rush, I would say the Unbinding has taken the Huldu almost as much by surprise as it has us.
In the meantime, abductions like these are casual acts, whimsical, spur-of-the-moment impulses of passion or spite by beings we really don’t understand at all.
There’s no obvious pattern, there’s no rationale. ”
He saw the fresh, rising wave of horror in her eyes.
He reached across the small space between where they sat, laid a hand softly on her arm.
“But—there are ways for me to track Mimi’s abductors, and we can expect that they won’t have taken her very far.
You must wait to hear from me. One day at a time, Mrs. Rush.
It is the only way. And as I said, it will most likely take a couple of weeks. ”
His worst result for a successful rescue was nineteen days; he had no reason to think this one would take longer, and he guessed the mother, once reunited with her child, would likely forgive any overrun. Certainly anything up to an extra week.
And if he was gone much longer than three weeks in the Forest, well—in all likelihood he wouldn’t be coming home at all, with or without Mimi Rush.
“Will…” She swallowed. “Will they hurt her?”
“No.” Said with blunt conviction—because how could he tell her anything else, what purpose would it serve?
—hoping he’d get the girl back before he was proven a liar.
“Not intentionally, anyway. Not when she’s so small.
They will be fascinated with her, the way you or I might be with a puppy, or perhaps a pet monkey you thought to train.
But the Huldu are not consistent in their enthusiasms. They grow easily bored. ”
She shuddered. “How long do you think they have had her?”
“Not long.”
It was a reflex, dismissive, the bare instinct to comfort, and Irene Rush saw through it like a pane of cheap glass. Her lips tightened. Duncan cursed himself. Hurried, stumbling, to limit the damage.
“That test with the iron filings? It tells us a lot. It works on the Huldu, and most of what they’ve brought back into our world with them.
But the changelings are different. They’re conjured to fit in with humans, to fool us.
The sorcery is made with that in mind. It’s a slow process, but give most changelings a couple of years and they lose almost all of their sorcerous attributes.
In time, they will come to be almost as human as the children they were made to replace.
Now you saw that reaction, Mrs. Rush. I can tell you with certainty that that thing in there pretending to be your daughter was brought into being no more than six months ago, probably much less. ”
“Six…months?” Something in her eyes—a trembling on the brink.
“I would say so. Is that when you started to notice the differences? The mood changes, the frenzies?”
“Mr. Silver, six months ago, we were not here, in Erlsley.”
Oh, Christ on a fucking bike…
“We have had to move around, you see. For work. With my husband…gone, and the times the way they are. It has not been easy…”
She saw the look on his face, jarred to a halt.
He remembered the Thames snarl in the older woman’s voice. “You were in London?”
“No, not—not then. We haven’t lived in the capital for…some years.”
“Where, then?” Trying to keep the snap out of his voice, because this was fucking…“How far from here?”
“A village called Dowgreave. It’s—it’s not far outside Macclesfield.”
“Aye, I know it.”
“I had clerical work in Macclesfield. For a while.”
“And you came here when exactly?”
Glances between Rush and the older woman. “Uhm—about four months ago, I would say.”
Macclesfield. Well over fifty miles from Erlsley, even for a south-southwest-flying crow. By Forest path, it was going to be more than half as much again. A lot of ground between, some of it still unfamiliar to him despite the years…
Come on, Duncan, get a grip. It’s the same basic Forest either way. Maybe a couple of clan lines to be crossed, but nothing you haven’t done before.
Still…
He drew a deep breath. “All right, Mrs. Rush, this part is important. Can you remember if Mimi—what you thought was Mimi—started acting out of character while you were still in Dowgreave? Or did it begin here?”
“I—don’t know.” Staring into the space between them. “She’s always unhappy when we have to move. I suppose it started when we got here; but maybe just before, yes, in Dowgreave. When we were packing up. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I just don’t remember.”
Voice muffling as she pressed her face into her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders trembled with the force of it. Duncan said nothing. The older woman glowered at him, put a tentative hand on the nape of her mistress’s neck. He waited. The sobbing ebbed, the trembling seemed to ease…
Abruptly, Irene Rush lifted her face from her hands. Something new in her eyes as she looked at him now. A new iron in the voice as well.
“Susan, would you leave us alone for a moment?”
The older woman went on glowering at Duncan. “Ma’am, that’s not—”
“It’s fine, Susan.” Mrs. Rush sniffed, like a debutante snorting cocaine for the very first time. Dabbed at her eyes with a ragged handkerchief from her sleeve. “Mr. Silver is an honorable man. Go to your room, please.”
Susan’s glare redoubled in intensity, clear warning for him in her eyes. But she gave way. She took her hand away from Mrs. Rush’s neck, patted her awkwardly on the shoulder a couple of times instead, then swept past Duncan with a final murderous look.
They waited until they heard the door to her room open and close again.
“Is it more money you want, Mr. Silver?”
There was a defiant gleam in her eyes, something that went beyond tear sheen. Duncan shook his head.
“It’s not the money. But the more of the Forest I have to cover—”
“I will do anything, Mr. Silver.” Shrugging so the shawl fell away from her upper body, reaching to slowly unlace the top of her nightgown. “Anything at all to have my daughter back. Do you understand me?”
Her breasts mounded under the thin silk as she tugged at it. He could make out the dark ovals of the aureole around each nipple, the weight where they pressed forward against the garment. He thought of his boyhood postcards again…
But the women on those cards had gazes that beckoned coyly or burned with heated desire as they looked at you out of the lens.
Availability by design. He looked into Irene Rush’s eyes, saw nothing there but desperation and the gritted will of some animal willing and able to gnaw off one of its own limbs to escape the trap it was in.
He’d seen the same thing once or twice before, over in France when they passed through towns shattered by artillery or hamlets pillaged by previous waves of soldiers also passing through.
Women who’d had everything else taken from them, offering up, with dead eyes, the only bargaining counter they had left in return for rations to feed a child or aged parent a few more godforsaken days…
“It’s not the money,” he repeated. “The money’s fine. I don’t need anything more from you, Mrs. Rush. But if I don’t know whether Mimi was taken at Dowgreave or here, it does complicate matters. And that may mean more time. I’m sorry.”
A shudder ran through her. She reached up to lace her nightgown again.
“No, Mr. Silver. It is I who should be sorry. I tell Susan I see an honorable man before me, and then I attempt to prove myself wrong the moment she is gone. Please forgive me.”
He felt the hot surge of mingled joy and rage again, prickling at the back of his eyes.
“You are a mother,” he said quietly. “You want your child back. Nothing you do to that end will ever need forgiving. Nothing, ever. Please remember that.”
“Well…” She drew the shawl about her shoulders again. She pulled herself visibly back together, sat up straighter. “What must we do with Mi—with Mimi’s…with the…changeling? While you are gone, I mean. I don’t know if I—”