Lupi 04 - Night Season

fate of all of them—of pretty much everyone in this world, save the sidhe—rested on her ability to get a good pattern so she could Find the medallion. Or so they’d been told. And he decided he had to get into her last night.
    Oh, but he’d been honest, hadn’t he? He’d told her he was doing exactly what he wanted, that he was serving his own needs, not hers. Aced that.
    He was used to being selfish. “Thanks,” he told the skinny, dark-skinned man at the paper stall. “I’ll be in touch if I’m able to get the pens made.” He ambled along.
    Years. He’d spent years acquiring the wrong sort of instincts for what he needed now. He knew how to keep things light, how to keep a woman from expecting too much. He didn’t know how to make a woman trust him. He’d never wanted that before.
    And Cynna was not exactly prone to trust. He understood that. He wasn’t, either. She’d modeled herself after the one dependable adult in her life, hadn’t she? She’d even adopted her aunt’s religion, though from what he could tell, she was blissfully unaware of that reason for her choice.
    First her father deserted her. Never mind that Daniel Weaver hadn’t intended to leave; the truth Cynna had grown up around was abandonment. Her mother had left her, too, slowly and infinitely more painfully. In a real sense, Cynna had lost her mother long before the woman staggered into the path of a taxi. Naturally Cynna wanted to be like her aunt…who’d died the way she’d lived. Alone.
    Cullen scowled. Aunt Meggie had a lot to answer for. Even a lupus could survive alone. He’d proved that, but survival was thin gruel compared to actually living.
    The market sprawled over several streets. Upscale and imported goods—imported meaning out-realm—were sold in permanent shops, but pretty much everything else was available from small stalls and wandering vendors. The section closest to the river was devoted to produce, with the fish market close by; another section offered both cloth and clothing.
    There was no slave market. That was one of the things he had wanted to learn. The practice of slavery was outlawed by treaty throughout Edge, and the gnomes put real teeth in their law. Trafficking in lives earned the death penalty.
    Point to the gnomes.
    Cullen lingered awhile in an area devoted to charms, potions, and common spell ingredients. Some of them were clearly bogus, but others were intriguing. He’d persuaded one of the gnomes to supply him with some walking-around money, but it wasn’t enough to buy the two charms that truly interested him, so he left without making any purchases.
    From there, he turned onto a narrow, unpaved street. Still plenty of mage lights, but the people wore the kind of coarsely woven wool he’d been given by the Ekiba. Some looked downright ragged.
    Most on this street were human. Especially the ragged ones.
    Cullen stopped at a tiny stall and bought lunch—spiced, shredded meat of some sort mixed with cabbage and wrapped in flat bread. He bought two, chatted a bit, asked where to buy a drink to go with them, and wandered in that direction, putting together what he’d learned so far.
    First, gossip was widespread about a gate to Earth being opened, and people were excited about the possibilities. Second, that’s about all they knew. There were rumors that the people seen arriving on the barge had included Earth-realm humans, but most discounted that. Why would a trade delegation gate in anywhere but the City?
    No one mentioned the chancellor’s medallion. No one recognized Cullen. They assumed he was human, but from one of the other realms. It turned out that the majority of humans living in Edge weren’t Theilo—the fall-through-the-cracks people—but were descended from them. And most Theilo hadn’t come from the Earth realm. A few humans had migrated here by choice, but they were the exception. Which made sense, given the prejudice against them. That was more a matter of bias and stereotyping than violent oppression, but enough to keep them on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
    Back home, lupi had been actively hunted by humans for generations. That was now illegal—but only when lupi were two-legged. So it was odd that he found himself resenting the humans’ plight here. Maybe he was constitutionally drawn to underdogs.
    While sorting his