Finally, I was the last person standing in the stable. I looked anxiously up, waiting for Medley to untie the Tangie boy and drop the rope back down for me. The pause stretched out, longer than any of those before. My chest started getting tight, concern flooding through me. Had they been spotted? Was Medley just going to leave me here? Was my punishment not just imprisonment in my grandfather’s terrible, flesh-twisting stables but to suffer their magics entirely alone?
The rope dropped down in front of me. I looked up.
Medley looked down.
“You coming?”
I grabbed the rope, wrapping it around my waist and leg to anchor myself, then held fast. “I need you to pull me up,” I said, managing not to sound ashamed of my own weakness. “I don’t have the upper-body strength to make the climb, and even if I did, I chapped my hands tying all the kids.”
She scoffed. “Excuses, excuses, princess,” she said, beginning to reel in the rope, lifting me off the floor. I held on as tightly as I could, fighting the urge to close my eyes. After everything else that had happened, pretending what I couldn’t see couldn’t hurt me would be more than just silly.
Once I was on the roof, she took her rope back, looking around at the loose jumble of assorted children. “All right, kiddos,” she said, in that up-and-down voice of hers. “Take a good look around you, because this is your last jaunt out into the open until we get you the hell out of here.”
Obediently, the children started scanning our surroundings. Medley looked at me, lifting one mismatched eyebrow, and so I emulated them.
Seen from even the height of a rooftop, Blind Michael’s land was as dark and crumbling as it had seemed from the ground, but there was slightly more logic to it. The forest surrounded most everything, branches providing convenient bases for candles and roosts for ravens. Clear paths snaked between clearings, ground beaten flat and smooth by hooves and feet. In addition to the central bonfire where Blind Michael’s throne was placed, there were two smaller fires in similar clearings. Medley’s fire, tucked as it was behind one of the more decrepit ruins, was obscured even from a height.
It seemed odd that the ravens hadn’t seen it in one of their flights. The thought was followed by a wave of panic, and I spun to Medley, who smiled, just a little, as she nodded.
“There you are. You’ve asked the question. Now ask yourself why I’m standing so calm and easy if there’s not an answer I can give?”
I forced myself to breath in as slowly as I could, then nodded. “The ravens. He sees whatever the ravens see.”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve been here a long time, and you don’t want to be caught again. Yet you’re not afraid right now. Why is that?”
“My ravens tell me you were taken trying to speak to his daughter. That right?”
I nodded.
“Well, when she comes out the garden to talk to her parents, it’s usually because she’s in a strop over something. Bit of bone too big for her liking in her morning fertilizer, not enough sun on her schedule for the week, that sort of thing. She’s a demanding thing, and she’s a great ally for me, even if she’d scream and turn me in as vermin in a heartbeat if she actually knew I existed.” Medley smirked. “The rose comes out of her garden, and inside the hour, both the Lord and Lady of this place go into it. She forces the issue by refusing to be placated until they treat her like their special little doll. And when that happens any time close to the normal feeding for the ravens . . .”
“He has them fed while he’s visiting his daughter?”
Medley nodded. “Keeps him from seeing too many things that might distract him from keeping her as calm as calm allows. You want to do something without him seeing you, you wait for Luna to break a fingernail or snag her dress, and you’ll get what you need soon enough. Now come on, all of you.”
“Where are we going?” asked the Siren girl.
Medley looked at her. “A little wariness will serve you well, but when I’m the only real hope you have, you listen to me and you don’t question what I’m asking you to do, if you know what’s good for you.”
“I told you, we’re going to her fire,” I said, before the Siren could object to being effectively shushed. “It’s very kind of her to show us a place we can be safe, especially since sharing her safe place with us makes it less safe for her. Everyone, get in a line behind Medley, right now.”
Medley gave me an amused look as the exhausted, traumatized children obeyed. “You have a voice like my old kindergarten teacher.”
“What’s kindergarten?”
She blinked then, looking faintly wistful. “Something the mortals do. I got to go. Part of first grade, too, and then I was here, and everything was different, forever and for always.”
That seemed to be all she had to say on the matter. She turned and walked toward the edge of the roof, the children following. I brought up the rear, where I could guide or gather any stragglers.
There was a heap of rocks and trash up against one wall of the stable, held stationary by tangles of briar. Medley began hopping nimbly down it, and the children followed, all save the Tangie boy, who froze, eyes wide, and stared at the descent in clear concern.
“I’ll carry you,” I said.
He turned immediately, stretching out his arms. I gathered him up and followed after the rest, more slowly than most of them, fighting not to slip and drop both myself and the boy—I needed to learn his name—into the waiting thorns. Soon enough, we were on the ground, and Medley was gesturing us all toward the cover of the trees.
We made it out of view just as I heard the first raven cry.
• • •
Dean had been tending Medley’s fire while she went to get the rest of us out of the stable. He had been joined by half a dozen people closer to our age, including another boy with hair like a sea anemone’s tangles. He jumped to his feet and rushed to snatch the smaller boy out of my arms, glaring at me.
I didn’t fight, just let go and stepped back, raising my hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean any offense. He just wouldn’t let me put him down.”
The older Tangie changeling looked to the younger, who nodded before starting to sign rapidly. The older relaxed somewhat and carried the younger one—who I assumed was his little brother—over to the logs around the fire, sitting and freeing his own hands in the process. They began signing back and forth, ignoring the rest of us.
I couldn’t really blame them for that, given the language barrier. I turned my attention to Dean. He was watching me, a sarcastic expression on his face. “You have a nice chat with Granddad?” he asked. “He give you everything you wanted for your birthday?”
“No,” I said, scowling a little. “Which you know, or Medley wouldn’t have needed to come and save me.”
“Take a look at it like this,” said Medley. “I wasn’t planning to go anywhere near the stables until we’d all had time to sleep and eat and sleep again. Means they”—she gestured to the children, many of whom had flopped down on the logs and were staring at the fire with empty, exhausted eyes—“would have been in the stables for hours on hours on hours. Some of them may have been already.”