With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan Read Free Book Online

with the palace crumbling apart; they said it had drained the Queen down to almost nothing, in the years before she vanished. Dead Rick would be surprised if the Prince had much more in him.
    He’d put one foot on the tosher’s chest to hold him in place; now he felt the man shift restlessly, confusion winning out over fear. The brief flash of sympathy Dead Rick had felt for the aging, exhausted Prince faded, driven back by more important concerns. “This ain’t any business of yours,” he said to the Prince.
    “The devil it ain’t. That bastard you’ve got there can barely feed ’imself; you can’t just go stealing ’is food so you can cause more trouble up ’ere!”
    The Prince’s sanctimonious reply would have been annoying enough if it were accurate. His complete lack of understanding made Dead Rick furious. Cause trouble? He wished he could afford to waste bread on that. Instead he was out here, with the Blackfriars bridges hanging over his head like two axes waiting to fall, because he needed some kind of insurance against the future, and didn’t want his ears cut off by any of the half-dozen fae to whom he owed a debt. And every minute this Prince stood there lecturing him was another minute Dead Rick had to put up with a weight of iron that made him want to howl and run for home.
    So he didn’t bother answering. Instead he just snarled, and threw himself forward.
    Trying to change shape out here felt like breaking all of his bones, individually. The iron fought him: it didn’t care whether he was man or beast, but it hated letting him shift between the two. When Dead Rick hit the Prince, he was caught halfway in between, a roaring monstrosity, bowling the man down in a tangle of fur and skin and teeth.
    Pain stopped him from doing more; his momentum took him into the wooden pillar of a crane, where an iron nail seared against his back like fire and ice. Dead Rick howled, writhing, and abruptly was in human form again. He lay panting on the ground, trying not to vomit, until he had control enough of his muscles to raise his head.
    By then he was alone. The tosher had fled, and so, apparently, had the Prince.
    So much for ’im and ’is orders. It seemed the man knew just how far his authority went.
    Dead Rick forced himself to his feet. Down in the mud, his knife and the packet of newspaper lay untouched; the tosher hadn’t bothered to collect his food before fleeing. But it wasn’t any use to Dead Rick without the man.
    It needed no dog’s nose to track him. The footprints were clear in the mud, heading west, under the bridges and up onto the massive wall of the Embankment. Dead Rick gritted his teeth and began to lope after him. There were iron pipes behind the granite exterior of the river frontage, but that was still better than the bridges, and Dead Rick was light on his feet; he gained rapidly.
    The tosher heard him coming, and spun to face him, knife in hand. Dead Rick held out the packet and his own knife alike. Up here, he didn’t have much time; the peelers did watch the Embankment walk. “I ain’t done with you yet. But you do what I tells you, and you’ll get out of ’ere without a scratch. Understand?”
    Clearly not, but the man nodded warily, willing to listen whatever this apparent lunatic had to say if it meant saving his own skin. “Take this,” Dead Rick said, tossing the packet back at him. “Now put that down at your feet and say, ‘A gift for the good people.’”
    “What?”
    Not quite as cowed by fear as Dead Rick thought. “Do it, or lose an ear. Your choice.”
    Shaking his head, the man dropped the packet onto the stone of the footpath. “A gift for the good people. Now what?”
    “Back up.” He obeyed. In one swift move, Dead Rick snatched up the packet and retreated. “Now you go. Back home, or into the sewers; I don’t care which. Just get out of my sight.”
    The tosher didn’t have to be told twice. He turned and continued running upriver, toward