Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(131)

"Soon," he said. "I have tried to reach him already, but not yet with success."

"Tell me if there is anything I can do to help you," she said.

His eyebrow quirked. He bent down then and lifted her hand, this time to kiss it, not seeming to mind the blood or the bandage. It was a gesture of courts long past in this world, but not in Faerie. Startled, Cristina did not protest.

"Lady Mendoza Rosales," he said. "Thank you for your kindness."

"I'd rather you called me Cristina," she said. "Honestly."

"Honestly," he echoed. "Something we faeries never say. Every word we speak is an honest word." 

"I wouldn't go that far," said Cristina. "Would you?"

A thunderclap shook the Institute. At least, it felt like a thunderclap: It rattled the windows and walls.

"Stay here," Kieran said. "I will go find out what that was."

Cristina almost laughed. "Kieran," she said. "Really, you don't need to protect me."

His eyes flashed; the infirmary door flew open and Mark was there, wide-eyed. He only grew more so when he saw Kieran and Cristina standing at the counter together.

"You'd better come," he said. "You won't believe who's just Portaled into the parlor."

* * *

The town of Polperro was tiny, whitewashed, and picturesque. It was nestled into a quiet harbor, with miles of blue sea spreading out where the harbor opened into the ocean. Small houses in different pale colors clambered up and down the hills that rose steeply on either side of the port. Cobblestoned streets wound among shops selling pastries and soft-serve ice cream.

There were no cars. The bus from Liskeard had let them off outside the town; nearing the harbor, they crossed a small bridge at the bottom of the marina. Emma thought of her parents. Her father's gentle smile, the sun on his blond hair. He'd loved the sea, living near the ocean, any kind of beach holiday. He would have loved a town like this, where the air smelled like seaweed and burnt sugar and sunscreen, where fishing boats traced white trails across the blue surface of the distant sea. Her mother would have loved it too-she had always liked to lie in the sun, like a cat, and watch the ocean dance.

"What about here?" Julian said. Emma blinked back to reality, realizing they'd been talking about finding something to eat before they'd passed over the bridge and her mind had wandered.

Julian was standing in front of a half-timbered house with a restaurant menu pasted up in the diamond-paned window. A group of girls passed by, in shorts and bikini tops, on their way to the sweetshop next door. They giggled and nudged each other when they saw Julian.

Emma wondered what he looked like to them-handsome, with all that windblown brown hair and luminous eyes, but surely odd as well, a little unearthly maybe, Marked and scarred as he was.

"Sure," she said. "This is fine."

Julian was tall enough to need to duck under the low-hanging doorframe to get into the inn. Emma followed, and a few moments later they were being shown to a table by a cheerful, plump woman in a flowered dress. It was nearly five o'clock and the place was mostly deserted. A sense of history hung lightly about it, from the uneven floorboards to the walls decorated with smuggling memorabilia, old maps, and cheerful illustrations of Cornish piskies, the mischievous Fair Folk native to the area. Emma wondered how much the locals believed in them. Not as much as they should, she suspected.

They ordered-Coke and fries for Jules, sandwich and lemonade for Emma-and Julian spread his map out over the table. His phone was next to it; he flipped through the photos he'd been taking with one hand, poking at the map with the other. Smears of colored pencil decorated his hand, familiar smudges of blue and yellow and green.

"The east side of the harbor is called the Warren," he said. "Lots of houses, and a lot of them are old, but most of them are rented out now to tourists. And none of them are on top of any caves. That leaves the area around Polperro and to the west."

Their food had arrived. Emma started wolfing her sandwich; she hadn't realized how hungry she was. "What's this?" she asked, pointing at the map.

"That's Chapel Cliff, love," said the waitress, setting down Emma's drink. She pronounced it chaypel. "Start of the coastal path. From there, you can walk all the way to Fowey." She glanced over at the bar, where two tourists had just sat down. "Oi! Be right there!"



       
         
       
        

"How do you find the path?" Julian said. "If we were to walk it today, where would we start?"