"If I knew what the Eulen was, I'd fuck it, kill it, and eat it," Maitiu snapped back smartly. "Keep your damn hands where I can see them! Why are you here?" He exerted the same pressure more sharply, not a tap but a demand.

Erich's hands jerked back out in front of him almost immediately at the command. He swallowed against the compulsion to talk, fought it briefly- and lost.

"I am in... hiding," he said, with difficulty. "From home. I... ran away." His right hand moved upwards, slowly, slowly, trying to show Matt there wasn't any threat there. The simple act of being compelled to talk had scared him badly.

And shown him exactly why the hunt had gone on so damn long for the kid.

"Verrat," he said, softly. "I am Verräter."

"That makes as much sense to me as a frog belching in a marsh." It was a powerful temptation to go on prodding the man until he cracked, but there was nothing at the end of that. "You left? Why are you here? What do you want with my son?"

"I do not know the Common," Erich said, in apology, a little desperate. "A crime against my kingdom, is why. For the prince dying in Cecilia, for letting the boy escape." His right hand finally clenched onto the high collar of his shirt and he pulled it aside; the top edges of a scarring burn could be seen against his collarbone. "Sentenced to death."

His face was white, but for the sunburned cheeks and peeling skin. He was slightly greenish. He hadn't know faeries could -do- that. If the boy could do that, demanding he speak...

"I ran away," he said. "The Eulen snuck me out. Ask your son, ask him about them. He will know what the Eulen are. I ran away, they told me to lay low here. I have been here for... for weeks, now. More than a month."

He shook his head, quickly, back and forth.

"I do not want your son. I am hiding here. I do not want your son to see me. I... I know why his Majesty wants him, though."

Maitiu scowled. The bands crept out of sight beneath his shirt's collar. He stood glaring at the man, teeth bared, as if he only the thinnest thread of patience kept him from actually biting the man like a dog. "What does he want him for, then?"

"Promise me I will walk out of this alive if I tell you," Erich countered. "Alive and on my own power."

Still. He was looking at Maitiu with an expression like amazement; a man impressed by what he had seen. It was an expression eerily similar to the one Samuel had had when looking at Curr in the basement in Cecilia, when he had first come down the stairs.

"I in turn promise I will not follow you unless you request it," he said softly. "ON my father's honor."

"D'you think I'd kill you right here on the street?" Maitiu let out a bark of laughter. "I'm not one of yours. We're not murderers." He frowned. "Might make you wish you were dead, but I'll not be the one that does the deed. Tell me."

"I will survive, whatever you do," Erich said quietly, through gritted teeth. He had lived through this much; the lower dungeons of the castle were not a pleasant place to find oneself just before escape.

"There is a reason I do not want your son to see me. I have reason to believe that if he were to see me, my safety here would be jeapordized. His Majesty would know, or suspect, the moment our eyes met." He hesitated, glanced around again, but by this point had decided the faery had no one with him.

"What you did, a moment ago. Can your son do this thing?"

"He's my son, isn't he?" Maitiu growled. "Don't get anywhere near him and you won't have to find out. Now. If what you say is true, that your white-balled prince can find my boy through you . . . you can either take yourself out of town now or I will kill you here on the street."

Erich shook his head. He wanted badly to reach for his knife again, but his fear of those shifting tattoos held him steady.

"Not through me, faery," Erich said, palms out again in surrender. "Through the boy."