Free Dragon Justice by Laura Anne Gilman Page A

naturally white-blond puff of
curls, matched to my normal urban goth-gear, was easily identifiable. Lot of
Talent in the city, but the combo of Talent, appearance, and showing up to poke
my nose directly into things that other folk looked away from? Savvy fatae knew
who I was, and unsavvy or ignorant fatae wouldn’t have lingered once I called
them out.
    “Come on. Seriously?”
    “Seriously.”
    My heart went into my throat and my eyes probably bugged out,
and I resisted—barely—the urge to drop to my knees and apologize for every
thoughtless, stupid, or mean thing I’d ever done. The woman standing in front of
me tilted her long, solemn face to one side and lifted one long, gnarled hand to
my hair, touching it as gently as sun touches a leaf.
    “I startled you. That was not my intent.”
    “M’lady—” And unlike with the Lady this morning, the title came
easily to my mouth, without resentment. “You do not startle but amaze.”
    Rorani. Not merely a dryad but The Dryad. It was rumored that
her tree predated the Park itself, making her well over three hundred years old.
Nobody had ever seen her tree, at least not and spoken about it, but Rorani was
always there, moving through the Park the closest thing to a guardian spirit it
had. If the fatae in New York had any leader at all, or one soul they would
listen to without hesitation, it was Rorani. Her willowy green-and-brown
presence could stop a bar fight in progress, halt a bellow midsound, and make
edged weapons disappear as though they’d been magicked into fog.
    “You are here about the children.”
    “What, everyone knows about this except us?” I sighed and
dragged a hand across my face as though to erase the words. “I am sorry. I
just…”
    “I have been watching them,” she said, accepting my apology
without acknowledging either it or my rudeness. “I worry. But I did not know who
to speak to, or even if I should. Humans…are difficult sometimes.”
    “As opposed to the logical, tractable, and obedient fatae?”
    At that, she smiled, a small, almost-shy grin that could break
your heart. “Even so.”
    That grin didn’t mask her concern, or soothe my unease, but it
put paid to my thinking this job wasn’t worth my skills. Even if this had
nothing to do with my case, I was glad I’d come. Anything that worried the Lady
of The Greening, Stosser would want to know about.
    “These children. Show me?”
    I was surprised when the dryad hailed a pedicab. I don’t know
why—even dryads must get tired of walking, eventually. I always felt guilty
using a pedicab—I was in better shape than a lot of the drivers—but Rorani
stepped as gracefully into the carriage as a queen into her coach, me the
awkward lackey trailing at her heels.
    “To the Meer, please,” Rorani said, and the pedicab headed
northeast.
    My first thought was to be thankful that I had encountered
Rorani the moment I entered the Park, saving me probably hours of searching… and
that thought led me to the suspicion that it hadn’t entirely been coincidental.
Accusing a dryad of collusion with a da-esh, though, took cojones I did not
have. And it changed nothing, save that the fatae of the city were helping in an
investigation without being prodded, coerced, or paid, and that was…new.
    I had no expectation that we were all going to join hands and
sing “Kumbaya” anytime soon; we might have stepped back from the edge regarding
human-fatae relations, but there were still generations of tension built into
every encounter. If Rorani had given word that we were to be helped… that was a
very good sign.
    We skirted the Reservoir and got off a little while after 102nd
street, vaguely on the east side of the Park. Rorani waited, and I belatedly dug
into my bag for cash to pay the cabbie. He sneered at my request for a
receipt.
    “This way,” she said, as he pedaled away. We walked past the
Lasker Pool and off the roadway, down a worn path, and into surprisingly deep
woods.
    This