Free With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan Page A

me home. Come, and we’ll talk along the way.” Together they went toward the carriage. Desperate, Eliza risked coming up the steps, as if she’d just emerged from the house’s cellar; she was rewarded by hearing Miss Kittering tell the coachman, “South Kensington, please.” Then they were inside, and the coachman mounted his box once more; with a flap of the reins they were away.
    Leaving Eliza standing in the middle of White Lion Street in a daze. Was she lying?
    It might be like the fraudulent spiritualists who claimed to summon ghosts, only their manifestations were nothing more than a conjuror’s tricks. Whitechapel had its share of confidence men—and women, too—swindling the gullible, and Miss Kittering was both young and wealthy enough to be a tempting target.
    Or that woman might have been telling the truth.
    If only Eliza had gotten her name! But—her feet paused on the pavement—she did have Miss Kittering’s name. And a district, too: South Kensington. Should the woman’s claims prove true, Miss Kittering would have her own connection to the faeries.
    Which Eliza could make use of. If she found a way to get close. And for Owen’s sake, she would find a way.
    She almost forgot her barrow in her haste. Eliza dragged her second skirt back on, hauled the barrow up the steps, not caring if she spilled oysters now. Miss Kittering. South Kensington. With that, I won’t have to wait another month.
    Owen—I’m coming.
    The Goblin Market, Onyx Hall: March 19, 1884
     
    “Dreams, good and bad! Loved ones back from the dead, very cheap right now, or demons chasing you for just a little bit more … morning there, my canine friend. I ’ear you’re doing well these days.”
    Dead Rick scowled at Broddy Bobbin, waving for him to lower his voice. “You think I want that shouted all over the Market, man? Just because I’ve got enough to keep people from breaking my fingers, don’t mean I’m ready to go around flashing my bread like some rich toff.”
    The crate Bobbin stood on only brought him to Dead Rick’s height; like most hobs, he was barely child-size. Any child that ugly, though, risked being drowned in a river. He smiled at Dead Rick, but it was a hideous thing, bad enough for a goblin’s face. “So you do ’ave bread. In that case, let me show you—”
    The skriker rolled his eyes. “I told you, I’m paying off my debts. Even if I wanted your grubby little second’and dreams, I wouldn’t ’ave anything to spare for ’em. I’m just looking for Cyma.”
    Bobbin pouted, but his wounded look was even worse than his smile, and he knew it. Giving Dead Rick up as a lost cause, he jerked one knobby thumb farther down the chamber. “She were talking with Charcoal Eddie a little while ago. You tell that bastard ’e’d better steal some worthwhile dreams next time. That last lot was pure rubbish.”
    They were always rubbish these days. Stealing dreams properly took time and effort; the goblins and pucks who did that sort of thing could no longer afford either. Mostly the Goblin Market made do with what it already had, everyone buying and selling the same trinkets and scraps over and over, like a leech feeding on itself. And the wares got more broken and worn out with every exchange.
    That didn’t stop them from trying, though. This, the largest of the Market’s actual markets, was full of noise and movement. No mortals—those were sold elsewhere, in a flesh market of squalling babies and people in cages—but a thousand kinds of things, from captive dreams to scratched phonograph cylinders. Fae of all kinds and nations came here, to buy or to sell; the majority might be English, but there were Scots and Irish and Welsh, Germans and Spaniards and French, creatures from so far afield they might be a different sort of being entirely. One pen held an enormous three-headed snake, which the alf standing in front proclaimed was a naga from distant India; it watched the passersby with drugged and