Free Roadside Magic by Lilith Saintcrow

hunting the Ragged as well.
    The thing’s trail overlaid hers, and he perhaps should not have followed so quickly, since the scent was already fading. The Ragged had not been Summer’s errand girl for naught; she was sprite-fleet, vanishing like a startled naiad.
    Alastair, crouched easily at the mouth of the culvert, narrowed his sharp eyes as thin trickles of nasty-smelling water slid around his boots. He’d bargained hard for his footwear from Madge the Wanderer, marveling at their thick but supple soles and how they kept his feet dry without chantment.
    Crenn’s nostrils twitched. Seamed, runneled flesh tingled all over his face. The scars spilled down his neck, grasping his shoulders and continuing down his chest and back. They tingled, too, and he knew the sensation too well to move.
    A leash on a troll meant someone to hold it, of course. Any Unwinter hiding behind the large, gray-green, slightly snoring hulk couldn’t venture out without the violet dapples of lightshield chantment on them, and Crenn needed to double back to find the Ragged’s trail again . . . but still. Leaving an enemy alive behind you was a fool’s move.
    Besides, he held no love for the Unseelie.
    Still, he hesitated, the sting of stagnant water and choking moss exhaling into the sunlight touching his shoulders and his brown-green hair. The moss would begin to dry soon, without Marrowdowne’s shady, steady drip, drip, drip to creep between the strands.
    What had she done, to fire-scar a troll and drive it this far? There was her voice, of course.
    Not a scratch upon her . . . I will make you beautiful again
.
    Crenn straightened. As he did, something occurred to him. Her trail was
far
too thoroughly confused. He wasn’t her only pursuer, but who else would erase her traces?
    Who else would Summer send? And why ask for Crenn himself, a forgotten relic mired in a noisome swamp?
    Perhaps because there was another player in this game, one the Hunter of Marrowdowne was known to have some manner of grudge against. Though grudges were as common aspixies; to have sidhe blood was almost synonymous with craving vengeance.
    Crenn left the stonetroll—and whatever else it was guarding—to its sleep. It was a puzzle. First Unwinter’s attack during the revels, now spring bursting free over the mortal world and Summer’s errand girl to be brought back whole.
    Then there was the little matter of
him
.
    Gallow
. Perhaps
he
was clearing the Ragged’s trail, so as to have the pleasure of gutting her? It wasn’t like him to kill a woman, or at least it hadn’t been when Crenn had called him
brother
.
    Still, you could believe a Half capable of almost anything, with the right inducement.
    While Crenn might make a halfhearted effort to keep Summer appeased, the idea of thwarting the former Armormaster held
much
more appeal. Perhaps Summer had known as much.
    His scars tingled afresh, thinking of doing that green-eyed Half bastard a disservice.
    “Fear not, little bird,” he murmured as he reached the top of the hill and peered through a screen of bushes at the metal carriages whizzing past. “Not a hair on your head shall be harmed.”
    First, though, he had to
find
her.
    Crenn checked the sky, rolled his shoulders back, and vanished.

CHANGELING NO MORE
15

    I t cowered as she worked herself free of the tangle, but it didn’t vanish into the bushes alongside the deck. Where had it hidden, that childcatchers couldn’t find it? Had the shock of Sean’s . . . death . . . driven it into witless flight? Was that why they had vented their anger on the parents, not finding the placeholder sleeping in his bed?
    It doesn’t matter
. She had to carefully wriggle between the glass teeth; the last thing she wanted was to leave a bloodtrail. Getting to hands and knees was tricksome, and crawling free probably destroyed whatever dignity she had left.
    At least when she finally extricated herself the changeling didn’t