The Borderkind by Christopher Golden Page B

silver-haired woman as they ate. The tragic story touched him, but it also reinforced the melancholy he was feeling at the prospect of setting off on his own to find Collette. Loyalty like that which Cheval Bayard and Chorti shared was precious.
    “All right, my friends,” Kitsune said when much of the meal had been consumed and the sharpest edge of their hunger blunted. She met Oliver’s gaze across the table, then opened her hands to include them all. “Shall we get on with this? We are all, each of us at this table, in danger. But the stakes are much higher than our own lives.”
    She glared at Coyote, who only raised an eyebrow.
    Frost tapped his fingers on the table again to get their attention. “Someone has set the Hunters after the Borderkind.
All
the Borderkind. Or nearly all. We have learned firsthand that some are collaborating with the Hunters, presumably to spare their own lives. Jenny Greenteeth was a traitor. She helped the Hunters track us, and for that, she died with them.”
    “Not Jenny,” said Cheval Bayard. A tear slid down her cheek and she turned from them as she wiped it away.
    “The bitch,” Coyote said, his voice flat.
    Oliver studied him, wondering if any of this was news. Coyote seemed to know much more than someone who had been in hiding ought to be privy to. Either that, or it was simply the arrogant air about him.
    “We prevailed, but not without losses. Gong Gong is dead.”
    Chorti growled deep in his chest and his upper lip curled back from those razor-blade teeth. The frog-thing muttered something in his guttural tongue.
    “He will be missed,” Wayland Smith said. The old man reached up to tip his hat back, golden afternoon sunshine lighting his face. There was a kindness there that Oliver had not seen before. And now a sadness as well.
    “This conspiracy against us must have been brewing for some time. First quietly, with a few killings scattered around the Two Kingdoms, and then more, until they had us all on guard or on the run,” Frost continued. “If we had acted more swiftly, gathered together, we would have had a better chance of fighting back. But we are too solitary, all of us. Those who learned of the threat looked to their own safety without considering the danger to their kin.”
    At this, Frost glanced pointedly at Coyote.
    Kitsune and Blue Jay nodded slowly.
    Coyote slapped the table, sneering. His eyes were still crazy, twitchy, but now there was a bestial cast to his features that had not been there before.
    “You’ll watch your tone and insinuations, Frost. What could I have done to save Gong Gong and the others who’ve died? Me alone? The Hunters would have roasted me on a spit.”
    “Perhaps it’s not too late,” Kitsune snarled.
    “Enough,” Blue Jay said. His tone was quiet, but with an edge that calmed them all. “We are all kin, and there are many more of us who are in danger. The river flows, and we cannot concern ourselves with what is already past, only with what comes next.”
    Wayland Smith smoothed his unruly beard. “I expect Frost has a plan.”
    The winter man cocked his head slightly as though searching for some insult hidden in Smith’s words. After a moment, he nodded.
    “I do, though it isn’t much of one, I’m afraid. The Falconer died by my hand. Before he did, he revealed the name of the one who had set the Hunters after the Borderkind. Our enemy is Ty’Lis, an Atlantean sorcerer who advises in the court of Yucatazca’s king.”
    Chorti sat up abruptly and shook his shaggy head.
    “I’m sorry, Chorti, but I speak truth. It would be dangerous to presume that Ty’Lis is acting on instructions from the king, but we must at least consider the possibility. The probability, really.”
    “He must be taking orders from the king,” Coyote sniffed. “Atlanteans have been neutral since the creation of the Veil. That is why both kingdoms use them as advisors. Hell, it’s the Atlanteans who created the truce to begin with.