Silver's Edge. Anne Kelleher

      The news that a mortal maiden, carrying a goblin’s head in a sack, had arrived at the outpost awakened Artimour and brought him blinking, upright, barely two hours after his head had first touched the pillow just before dawn. “A goblin’s head?” he repeated, as Dariel, his body squire, moved about the room, shaking out fresh underlinen, opening a shutter to let in enough light for him to dress. “Are you sure it’s a goblin’s head?”

      “There’s no mistake about that, my lord. I was in the kitchens when they brought her in—you could smell it coming half a league off.”

      “And how’d she find her way here?” Artimour dragged himself out of bed, and splashed cold water from the pitcher on the table into a basin and onto his face. He looked up to take the towel Dariel proffered.

      “The scouting party you sent out after that last raid, my lord. They found her just as she crossed over the border.”

      “They’ve all come back?”

      “No, my lord.” Dariel handed him hose and underlinen and did not meet his eyes. “The captain of the watch sent them out again. There are three of the company missing.”

      “Missing.” He sank down onto the edge of the bed. The word punched through the fog of his exhaustion like a fist. Something had happened last night, something had shifted, changed. He could smell it, like a flake of pepper just under his nose; feel it, like a tiny piece of gravel in his boot. There was a difference in the goblins last night—they had attacked with a ferocity he had not experienced before. He wondered bitterly how far away Finuviel—Finuviel, his nephew and his junior and his newly appointed Commander—was with the much needed reinforcements. The thought of Finuviel automatically made him even more bitter, for it was difficult to accept that the much less-experienced, much younger sidhe had been rewarded with the title of High Commander of the Queen’s Guard, which meant that he was now Artimour’s commander-in-chief and while he had not yet begun to meddle with Artimour’s carefully constructed plan of defense for the outer wards, there was no doubt at all in Artimour’s mind that once Finuviel arrived, he would begin to question everything that Artimour had done up to now. The line was holding, he thought. But something’s changed, something’s different, and will Finuviel listen and understand? Or would he simply assume that Artimour’s half-mortal blood interfered with his competency, as the Queen and her Council so obviously did?

      But Dariel was continuing, relaying the mortal woman’s story, “—and what’s more, my lord, she’s insisting she intends to show it to the Queen.”

      “Great Herne, that might kill her.” He accepted the shirt Dariel held out, pushing away all thoughts of resentment and Finuviel. He had to deal with this latest crisis with a clear head. “The Queen, I mean. Not the mortal.” He shoved his arms into the sleeves of his shirt. Before last night, they might have laughed. Now not even the ghost of a smile bent either of their mouths. “Any word from—” he hesitated, loathe to speak the name of the rival who’d supplanted his command “—Finuviel?”

      “A dispatch came in for you shortly after dawn. I had thought it better not to disturb you.”

      “I appreciate that, Dariel.” And he did appreciate it, for there’d been very little rest for anyone lately. And after last night, he doubted there would be more until Finuviel arrived with the reinforcements. And once Finuviel arrived, who could say what changes he’d insist on? The mortal was right in one respect—the Queen and her Council might not need to see the goblin’s head to believe it, but they had to be made aware that a goblin had somehow crossed the border into the Shadowlands. For such a happenstance could only mean one thing. The magic of the Caul—the Silver Caul of lore and legend and song—forged by his mortal father and imbued by his mother Gloriana with her sidhe magic, had somehow—momentarily at least—failed. It was the only thing that could upset him more than the possibility of losing three more of his troops after last night. If only Finuviel were here—it might be amusing to watch him struggle with this unexpected development.

      But Finuviel was not. Artimour plucked the doublet from Dariel’s hand and whipped it on, then sat down on the edge of the bed, and reached for a boot, thinking fast. Perhaps there was a way to turn this unexpected calamity to his advantage. “Bring the mortal to the library, then have my horse saddled and pack my saddle roll. The Queen must be told of this as quickly as possible.” Tidings such as this should be brought directly to the Queen and her Council. It would also provide him an opportunity to discover how his replacement had been engineered. He paused in tugging his first boot on. “You’re sure it’s a goblin’s head?”

      Dariel looked up from handing over the second boot. “You’ll smell it on the mortal yourself, my lord.”

      Artimour allowed Dariel to tug and brush and pat until he stepped away, satisfied. “I’ll see the mortal now. And something to break my fast—I can’t remember if I ate dinner last night or not.”

      “You had no time to finish it, my lord.” Dariel handed him a parchment packet, and with a quick bow, was gone.

      Artimour stalked down the hall to the library he shared with the other officers and sank into the deep cushions of the chair behind his desk. On the one hand, he was sickened by the potential loss of three more soldiers, soldiers they could not afford to lose, men who’d become friends in the long days of their preparations. And on the other, a mortal maiden come to show the Queen the head of a goblin found lying dead in Shadow could only mean that against all expectation, all assumptions, the Caul’s power had failed—or fluctuated, perhaps, like the webs of magic that bound the borders. But how was that even possible? he wondered. The magic of the Caul was supposed to be a special blending of mortal and sidhe energies. It was not linked to the reigning Queen in the same way as the magical wards containing the goblins, and thus, was not expected to be affected by Alemandine’s pregnancy. But how else to explain how a goblin could have fallen into Shadow? It struck him odd that the task of bringing the goblin’s head here—a wholly unexpected stroke of logical behavior coming from mortals he would not have foreseen—should have fallen to a mere girlchild. Were there not warriors worthy of the task? Born under the shadow of mortal taint, he had always distanced himself from anything having to do with humans. And yet, even to him, this action seemed extraordinary, the last thing one might expect from a mortal.

      He ripped open the parchment packet. It was from Finuviel advising him to expect the reinforcements in ten days. Ten days? He put the parchment down and rubbed his eyes. Ten days meant something different today than it had before last night, before he’d witnessed his first true death. Ordinarily the sidhe did not die. They boarded ships and went into the West, when their time in Faerie grew wearisome. That is, unless they were slain by either goblin or silver. It was not something he had ever seen until last night, and it had shaken him profoundly, shocked him to his very core. The goblins that had roared across the boundary last night were different, he thought, his mind replaying the events with such crystalline clarity it felt as if he relived them anew. Their hides were tougher, their claws longer and thicker, and they fought with a ferocity he’d never seen before. The web was strained nearly to the breaking point and though