A Red-Rose Chain

The only signs of motion came from the crows picking at the grass on the edge of the pavement. There was no guarantee that they weren’t working for King Rhys—living in Faerie means never knowing what is or is not spying on you—but they were far enough away that I was pretty sure they couldn’t hear us.

“Don’t-look-here, Tybalt, now,” I said, voice tight. My fingers were itching to go for my knife. I didn’t mind being watched while we were in the Court of Silences. I had expected that; it was part and parcel of being a diplomatic attaché to a Kingdom that didn’t want me. But the fact that we were being followed out into Portland itself, and followed by people who could track us even after we had passed through the Court of Cats? That wasn’t good. That showed a level of dedication to keeping me under surveillance that made me uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t even put into words.

Tybalt nodded. He pressed his hands together, rattling off a quick line of what sounded like Middle English. The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose and burst around us as he separated his hands, reached over, and grabbed my wrist. “Keep hold of me,” he said. “It works better when the spell doesn’t need to labor across open ground.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And there’s nothing in that casting about wanting to minimize my chances to go off and get myself hurt?”

He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I admit your nearness is a convenient side benefit, but no. I wanted to make the spell as strong as possible. That meant accepting certain limitations.”

“Okay.” I stepped closer. He switched his grip on my wrist to something a little less awkward. “Where are we?”

“Half a mile from our last known location, give or take a bit. We’re too far from the alley where we are meant to meet with the others, if that’s the true core of your question. We’ll need to take the Shadow Roads again.” He frowned a bit as he spoke.

I gave him a sidelong look. “How much are you wearing yourself out? You’re not a taxi service, Tybalt, and I don’t want you hurting yourself just because you’re trying to keep me safe. I’m harder to kill than you think I am.”

“Having been at your deathbed twice, I tend to disagree.”

“Having seen you dead, I don’t think you get to claim the moral high ground here.” I looked around again, and sighed. “All right. I have a solution. I don’t think you’re going to like it very much, and I don’t much care.”

Tybalt gave me a sidelong look. “What is this solution?”

“We’re going to walk until we find a bus stop with a bus that’s going in the right direction. Then, when the bus comes, we’re going to get on behind whatever passengers are coming on or off, and we’re going to make our way across Portland like ordinary people.”

Tybalt blinked slowly, looking like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You want to take the bus,” he said.

“Yup,” I said. “I know, it’s pedestrian and plebeian and lots of other things that start with the letter ‘p,’ but it also works. Buses are designed to get people from one place to another. And more, if Rhys sent whoever it is that’s following us—and I think we can both agree that’s what’s going on here—then he’s never going to dream we would take the bus.”

Tybalt blinked at me again, even more slowly than before. Then, almost against his will, he began to smile.

“Very well,” he said. “Take me to your bus.”

The nearest bus stop was about a block away, on a corner where the pavement was cracked and the trees were less well-tended than the ones near the donut shop. I guessed that meant we’d been downtown before, and were now somewhere out near the fringes of the city. There was a map of the bus routes served by this stop, and one of them was definitely the one we wanted. That was good. There was no one at the bus stop. That was bad. I sighed, checked the direction of the bus we needed to take, and started walking again.