Page 65 of Ryld's Shadows
Chapter Fourteen
Hank came out of the bedroom the next morning, humming to himself. Amazing how having someone he lo—reallylikedsleeping next to him improved his mood in the morning. He stopped and backed up when he spotted the lump on the couch.
A drow-shaped lump buried under one of the soft blankets that had been scattered around the front room.
“Kai?”
An unintelligible noise came from the blanket nest, followed by soft cursing in drow. Kai’s head emerged, and he looked around blearily before flopping back down. “I fell asleep on your cursed couch.”
Hank did his best not to laugh, but there might have been a snicker. “Not really a morning person, are you? Should I see if I can get us some coffee?”
“My eternal gratitude,” Kai muttered as he began the complicated process of untangling himself from the blankets. “The adoptions—”
“Hold off on that.” Hank had already reached the door. “Until you can put words together better.”
He nodded to the goblin guard on the door—obviously there to make sure Ryld didn’t wander around, none of them stopped him or Kai going in and out—and made his way down to the kitchens. Coffee. Whatever they had going for breakfast. Maybe some of that nice seed bread the aelfe seemed to like…
His heart jumped hard when someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a hallway. He yanked away, fists up, but it was one of the goblin kitchen workers, an artisan caste goblin probably half Hank’s weight.
“Um, good morning?” Hank let his arms relax, though he stayed wary. The goblin’s eyes darted everywhere, and his hands wrung together anxiously.
“You…elder brother, you and your drow friend, you’re looking into the orphanage, right?”
Hank leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Why would you say that?”
“Feldspar works there. He’s my wife’s cousin. And he told her that he saw you there. And one of my half-brother’s cousins is friendly with a pixie and she said you’d been in Pixieland, asking things.”
The rambling explanation made Hank oddly homesick. This was how goblin communities worked—these complex webs of communication and obligation through kinship and acquaintance.
“All right, yes. Things seemed off there,” Hank admitted. “What about it?”
The kitchen goblin winced and ducked his head. “I can’t do it anymore. They’re just kids.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The orphanage kids!” The goblin spoke in a whisper, but it might as well have been an anguished scream. “I’m just the driver, okay? That’s all I do. But the kids are crying, and the fairies are crying, and there’s a pickup tonight, and it’s justwrong,and Ican’t.”
Oh goddesses.Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hank had been afraid of something like this. But he’d been hoping it was just a pay-for-adoption scheme. “Slowly, little brother. What fairies?”
“The ones from the glade. The ones they sell.”
“How would you even catch fairies? Why doesn’t their little queen come looking for them?”
Tears were in the goblin’s eyes now. “I don’t catch the fairies. Some of the others, they do it. They cover the glade in sleep smoke and then they go in and fill orders. This many blue, this many orange and on like that. The fairies go into spelled wire mesh cages so they can’t ‘port out. They leave changelings for the ones they take. They’re just weed and mud changelings, so they look convincing for maybe a day or two and then they ‘die’. So the fairies just think they got sick and passed and don’t come looking.”
The nausea rolling in Hank’s stomach was getting worse. “Who do they sell them to?”
“We sell them to this bunch of humans. Hard people. Lots of guns. They take the pixie kids and the fairies. Pretty sure the fairies get sold as pets. I’ve seen the ads. The kids, they’re almost always the older kids—” Here the goblin broke off and started to sob.
“Goddesses,” Hank spat out. “I have the picture. Why do youdothis?”
The goblin sniffled and wiped at his eyes. “The money’s good. I have kids to feed. Herself doesn’t pay enough to feed a family of fleas. But they don’t let you stop. There’s…threats.” He grabbed Hank’s sleeve in a desperate grip. “But you’re from AURA. You can make it stop.”
“We can try. You said there’s a pickup tonight?” Hank removed the goblin’s hand as gently as he could.
“Yes. After moonset. The door on the north side of the orphanage.”
“All right. For now, you’re going to come down to the kitchens with me and pretend like I snagged you in the hall to get us breakfast. Plenty of coffee, please. Then tonight, you’re going to make sure there’s a wagon and horses waiting for us in the second glade on the path that goes toward Pixieland. You have all that?”
