“Why did you keep up such a pretence?” Her initial shock was slowly fading and in its place a small, bright anger flickered into life. She had been fooled.

  “I was trying to get a feel for you.”

  “And? What did you decide?” Gwin felt the leafling flutter once more against her chest and she willed herself to be calm, fearful of what else she may awaken.

  “I decided you are sincere. Mostly harmless, if a little simple-headed.” Gwin bristled once more at this, but she let him continue. “I also decided there are those amongst the changelings who would tan my hide if they heard I’d made the first Asrai to set foot this side of Nymed in a thousand years turn tail and leave. They deserve to hear you say your piece, then they can make up their own minds.”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “Not here. The walls have ears and the windows have eyes. Unkind ones.” The hobgoblin straightened the cap on his head and marched towards the door. “Come on, then.”

  “You mean for me to meet with the changelings now?”

  Gwin watched him open the door and step outside, but her own feet remained rooted to the floor. She had not anticipated matters would progress so quickly, and she little trusted the prickly shopkeeper. She half-expected him to trick her into some kind of trap.

  “Well, they are waiting for you. Best get this over with.”

  Briefly touching the sleeping eye pendant hanging at her throat, Gwin wrapped her cloak more tightly about herself and followed Gulpe out onto the street.

  Before closing the door behind them, he paused to call into the dark of the shop, “Petey, you’re in charge. Don’t let no rough-types in.”

  Gwin was convinced she heard the shuffling keuhog grunt in reply but she had no time to ask Gulpe about it—he was already making his way up Midnight Lane without even a cursory backwards glance to see if she was following.

  It was said that hobgoblin babies were born wise, arriving into the world as brown and wrinkled as walnuts. Their faces changed little as they grew so it was hard to place an age on them. As Gwin struggled to keep up with Gulpe’s brisk pace, his wooden clogs clicking on the cobbles, she realised he was not nearly as advanced in years as she had first suspected.

  He finally stopped before a fountain, once ornate but now showing signs of wear. The constant flow of water into a great stone bowl at its base had worn smooth furrows into the surface, and many of the blue and white tiles were loose or had fallen off completely. Rising rather majestically from the bowl and raised on a stone plinth was an enormous statue of a flying fish. Its jagged wings were outstretched mid-flight and its mouth gaped, pouting lips blackened by the stream of water falling from them. Gwin thought it may have had gemstones set into its eye sockets once—blazing rubies or gleaming emeralds. Now the eyes were empty and blank, the jewels long stolen.

  “Here we are,” Gulpe announced.

  Gwin turned, looking for a doorway or a building. There was nothing but a dead end and a rising wall blocking any further passage beyond the fountain.

  “Where are we?”

  “You are standing on the very last slither of old Armoria,” Gulpe said. “Once we called this place Kudann, the City of Sunlight. When Dewer arrived he built that wall you see there, right through the town square. His ugly excuse for a citadel sits on the other side. Kudann was almost destroyed completely.”

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  “Almost?”

  “You catch on quick, Mrs, I’ll give you that.” Gulpe looked behind him, making sure they were alone in the dark of the alley before moving towards the fountain. “Follow me.”

  Gwin watched him step into the stone bowl and slip beneath the stream of rushing water. She almost laughed, wondering why he would soak himself in such a manner, before realising he had disappeared completely. She searched for him behind the fountain but there was nothing but the bright rushing of the water and the looming dark of the impenetrable wall.

  “Are you coming, or what?” demanded a disembodied voice. It sounded as though it was coming from beneath the water, muted and thick.

  Gwin quickly decided she had come too far to turn back now. Without giving herself time to think, she bent to remove her thin leather slippers and, holding them to her chest, stepped up into the fountain to duck beneath the falling water. She expected to be drenched but was pleasantly surprised to discover the water vanished to cloudy vapour as soon as it touched her skin.

  “Keep walking,” Gulpe called from somewhere on the other side.

  Gwin forged ahead, one groping hand outstretched before her. Gulpe’s small, rough hand grasped hers and pulled her forward, out of the water and into a wide, open space. Gwin stared, open-mouthed. The sun, so harsh in the cloudless blue skies above Armoria that morning, was shining low and pale here in Kudann. It flickered daffodil yellow through the leaping waters of a second, smaller fountain, fashioned into the shape of a lion’s head and set into a wall on her right. The air seemed to slow. A languid breeze moved through her hair, bringing with it the smell of incense and fragrant candles.

  “Welcome to Kudann.”

  They were standing in a courtyard, the bordering dwellings rendered with a thick, white clay inset with pieces of sparkling glass. Covered passages, their ceilings heavy with flowering vines and their walls lined with brightly painted doors, led away in multiple directions.

  “Speechless, are you?” Gulpe said, studying Gwin’s face. “Can’t say I blame you.”

  Hurriedly pulling her shoes back on, Gwin followed him into the courtyard and saw that many of the buildings were ornately decorated shops. She sneaked a look into their windows as Gulpe began to hurry her along. Many of the items offered for sale were banned in Armoria—magickal objects that shimmered in the pale sunlight with a raw, barely contained power.

  At the head of the courtyard stood another statue of Thetia. It was much larger and grander than the one in Gulpe’s shop, but this incarnation of the maternal goddess was no terrifying siren. Her eyes were soft and kind. She gazed benevolently over Kudann as the snake in her hands coiled against her chest in an eternal embrace.

  They moved deeper into the courtyard. Gwin noticed several smaller doors tucked into corners and along the bottom of the walls. Tiny moons and stars hung from little brass knockers, fashioned from beads and crystals.

  “Homes of the wee folk,” Gulpe explained. When he saw her confusion he sneered, his forehead crumpling like parchment. “Did you believe none survived the long years but you and those insidious humans? What have your kind been up to all these decades?” He didn’t give Gwin time to answer. “Hiding at the bottom of the world with your heads stuck in the snow. That’s what you’ve been up to.”

  “Insidious, am I? That’s fighting talk, Gulpe and I will hear none of it.”

  Gwin drew a sharp intake of breath when she recognised Barlo, casually lounging on the bottom step of a rickety-looking flight of stairs. Above him was a balcony running along one side of the courtyard.

  “You know what you are, boy,” Gulpe replied with a gruff laugh.

  “Good afternoon, fair Gwin.” Barlo leapt from the step with a flourish to bow before her. “I thought you might find your way here eventually. My changeling friends have talked of little else.”

  One of these friends was perched on a higher step. She was slight and angular, her skin glowing amber as though dusted with gold.

  “This is Neave,” Barlo said, turning to introduce her. “The finest monologist the Barlo Players has to offer.”

  Instead of reacting coyly, Neave simply nodded, accepting the compliment as fact. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, extending a rather formal gloved hand to Gwin. Gwin shook it, admiring the blue cloak she was wearing. One half was covered in tiny, painstakingly stitched white stars. “I was lucky enough to see you perform.” Neave sucked in her breath and half-closed her eyes. “It was breathtaking.”

  “Thank you,” Gwin said, not quite sure how to react to such praise.

  “Enough of this.” Gulpe waved Neave and Barlo aside and pushed past them to climb the stairs. “We have business in the meeting hall. You two should join us.”