A Red Rose Chain

THIRTEEN

WALTHER HAD LEFT MARLIS with a supply of the antidote he’d dusted on her cookies, and a promise that he’d find a way to make her long torment end. I think that even if I hadn’t been willing to stand up against Rhys, Walther would have been plotting a revolution all by himself. The tearstains on his shirt made the reasons exquisitely clear.

Ceres escorted us to the edge of the forest, leading us through the trees until the path that would bring us to the palace appeared out of the green. There were rose goblins lounging there, basking in the moonlight and “coincidentally” keeping an eye on the distant keep. I had every faith that, had Rhys sent people looking for us, the rose goblins would have come to warn Ceres. The fact that they would have warned us at the same time was almost an accident.

“Remember,” she said, and then she was gone, melting back into the green like she’d never been there in the first place.

“It’s amazing how quickly a purple person can disappear when she really puts her mind to it,” I said. The path stretched out in either direction. Thanks to the way the forest bent, both ways seemed to lead to the castle. I turned to Walther. “Which way?”

“This way,” he said, and started walking. Tybalt and I followed, letting him set the pace. We’d all had a hard night, and it wasn’t over yet, but of the three of us, he was definitely the one who had suffered the deepest and most painful shocks.

After we had walked in silence for several minutes, Walther said, “You didn’t ask.”

“What?” I turned my head enough to see the side of his face. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his face with his hand, spreading his fingers so as to cover the whole thing before lowering his arm and saying, “When she thought I was her sister, you didn’t say anything. And now you’re not asking. It’s not the response I expected.”

“Ah.” We kept walking, me taking advantage of the pause to put my thoughts in order. Finally, I said, “I guess I didn’t know how to respond. I still don’t. You’re you. You’ve always been you. If who you are used to be someone different, that’s your business, not mine.”

“There have always been members of my Court whose parents named them one thing, but who were in truth another,” said Tybalt. “When I was younger, they would go to the stage. Only men were permitted, you see, so a man who was in truth a woman could live a woman’s life, petticoats and powders and all, under the guise of playing pretend. And few who would enforce the law looked critically at the stagehands—I suppose they assumed it would not have been worth the dangers of being a woman in the theater if you never took the stage. They did not understand that the attraction was in having the freedom to be themselves, free from judgment, free from social laws.”

“You know, sometimes I forget how old you are,” said Walther.

“But I never forget how old I am, even as I am surrounded by the children of this modern world, who do not understand the trials of those who came before them,” said Tybalt. He sounded amused, which meant he was probably being clever—or at least thought he was.

I elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “We get it. You’re a creepy old man, and I’m way too young for you. Now quit it.”

Tybalt laughed.

Walther rubbed the side of his face this time, rather than the whole thing, and sounded relieved as he said, “I didn’t expect this to be quite so easy, if it ever came out. I was expecting . . . I don’t know.”

“Is this because I’m a changeling?” I asked gently.

“I feel like a jerk for saying it, but yeah,” he said.

“I understand.” And I did. Faerie could be backward in a lot of ways—the absence of indoor plumbing in many knowes was a big one—but having a population of semi-immortals with a very low birth rate meant that in other ways, Faerie had always been ahead of the mortal world. No one batted an eye at May and Jazz’s relationship; they would have been normal and accepted in any Court in the world a hundred years ago, or five hundred years ago, all the way back to the beginning of Faerie. The odd part would have been May’s history as a night-haunt, not the fact that they were both women. The only limit Faerie really put on who someone loved came when it was time to produce heirs . . . and since adoption and fosterage were both acceptable within the nobility, even that wasn’t required.

But I wasn’t solely a child of Faerie. I’d been born and raised in the human world, in the 1950s. Yes, I’d moved to the Summerlands when I was very young, but that didn’t mean I had escaped without a fun assortment of human prejudices on top of the fae ones I’d learned during my adolescence and adulthood. Some purebloods, when they were making the case for why they were better than their changeling cousins, would point to our supposed “small-mindedness” as proof that we would never be good enough. And in some ways, in some cases, they were right.

“I’m sorry you had to be afraid of how I’d react,” I said, when the silence got to be too much for me.

Walther flashed me a quick, crooked smile. “It’s cool. We’re cool.”

“Cool,” I said, and then burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of my own reply. Walther blinked, looking nonplussed, before he started laughing as well. Tybalt didn’t join in, but smirked, shaking his head.

“I am to be forever surrounded by the young,” he said. “I would bemoan my fate, but I am not yet sure whether it is intended to be punishment or paradise.”

“Here’s a tip,” I said, still half laughing. “If you call me a punishment, you’re going to spend our wedding night sleeping on the couch.”

“But ah, you see, I will have a wedding night. So long as you do not steal that from me, I can endure any trial the world sees fit to set before me.”

“Right.” I glanced to Walther. “Marlis mentioned the Cu Sidhe as a major tie. Do you think we should have brought Tia after all?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Everyone who made it out of Silences scattered after the war. There were always Cu Sidhe in the Court, but most of the time, they were dogs. They seemed happier that way. No one really questioned it . . .” He trailed off as we came around a bend in the path.

The mouth of King Rhys’ gardens appeared before us, marked both by the tall topiary archway that separated cultivated paths from forested wilds, and by the guards in the livery of Silences who stood across the opening. There were four of them, two armed with short swords, and the other two armed with nasty looking polearms that probably had some fancy name but really just looked like giant manual can openers on sticks. Whatever they were, they meant business.

The three of us stopped dead. It seemed like the best way to prevent actual death from occurring. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“Sir October Daye, you are under arrest for sedition and conspiracy to commit treason,” said the guard in the middle. He was tall, black-haired, and silver-eyed, with the sharply pointed ears and harsh cheekbones of the Tuatha de Dannan. Not part of the original guard, then, and not another relative of Walther’s being forced to work for someone who wanted to destroy him.

“See, this is familiar ground,” I said, glancing to Tybalt. “We should have arranged for me to be arrested earlier. I always do so much better when I’m being arrested.”

“And yet you do so much damage to the hearts of the people who love you when you insist upon spending so much time in gaol,” said Tybalt stiffly. “If it is all the same to you, I would like for you to minimize your periods of incarceration.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I turned back to the guard, who looked increasingly annoyed. There was a script that normally accompanied arrests, and I wasn’t following it. I wasn’t even following the basic themes of the play. “So I’m being arrested for sedition and treason, right?”

“That is correct,” said the guard. “Will you come quietly, or must we use force?”

“That depends. Where will we be going?”

“To King Rhys, that you might plead his mercy and receive your sentence.” The guard’s tone made it clear that pleading for mercy wouldn’t do me much good—although it might provide vital entertainment for the members of the Court, who didn’t seem to have much to do with their time.

“Straight to the King? No stops to have dungeon funtimes or examine your torture chamber?”

The guard blinked. “Yes. Straight to the King.”

“In that case, let’s go.” I smiled sunnily. One of the guards took a step back. The others looked like they wished they had the courage to do the same.

“Er,” said the lead guard.

“This is where you take us prisoner, despite the fact that I have diplomatic immunity and you can’t legally arrest me,” I said, in a helpful voice.

“I would prefer not to be taken prisoner, as I am a visiting monarch, but I will gladly accompany you as you lead my betrothed off to a travesty of justice,” said Tybalt. “Perhaps a second war can be declared today.”

“Stop sounding like that would be fun,” said Walther.

“Shan’t,” said Tybalt.

“Come with me,” snapped the lead guard, who had apparently realized that we could do this until the sun came up. The other three guards moved to form a rough circle around us, and together they led us into the garden.

It was a lovely area, all landscaped hedges and blossoming roses, some in colors I had never seen before, not even in Luna’s gardens. That had to be Ceres’ work. She had the advantage of age, and access to the test garden she’d been telling us about—and if she’d been nursemaid to the previous royal family, she must have been doing something for the new regime in order to retain her access to the palace and grounds. Tending the garden seemed like the easiest thing for her to do.

People strolled here and there along the garden paths and down the central promenade. There were too many of them for it to have been coincidence: they had come to watch my arrest. Some of them looked amused by the sight. Others looked disappointed, like I was supposed to be crying and trying to get away by this point. I considered telling them that I’d been arrested by the best, and that their palace guard needed to step it up, but decided against it. There was no point in taunting the men who’d been sent to get me. They were just doing their jobs, and it’s never a good idea to needlessly antagonize people with swords.

One thought led inexorably to another. I snorted. Tybalt gave me a sidelong look. “What is it now?” he asked.

“Just thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve managed to wind up covered in blood,” I said. “It’s like a new trend. A blood-free trend.”

“Pray keep it up; I find it a refreshing change,” he said.

I laughed, and we kept walking.

The guards didn’t like the fact that we weren’t treating the whole situation as dire and filled with ominous portent: I could tell that from the way they looked at me, stealing glances out of the corners of their eyes as they waited for me to break down and start crying. I smiled when I caught them looking at me, but I didn’t taunt them or laugh in their faces. Under the circumstances, that seemed like the best that I could do.

Of the three of us, Walther came the closest to behaving the way he was expected to behave. He walked silently, watching the faces of the people we passed like he thought he could uncover the secrets to the Kingdom if he just looked deeply enough. He didn’t look like a defeated man, but he definitely looked like a man who’d been hit more times than was fair, and was still trying to recover his footing.

More guards met us at the entrance to the castle, presumably to make sure we didn’t try anything in the presence of the King. I smiled politely as they joined the formation around us, and we walked, en masse, to the receiving room doors.

Marlis was already waiting there, her face composed into a mask of utter disdain. “You are entering the presence of His Highness, King Rhys of Silences,” she said. “Should any of you raise hand or voice against the King, the penalty will be sleep for one hundred years. Should any of you present a clear and present danger to the King, the penalty will be sleep for one hundred years. Should any of you refuse the justice of the Crown, you shall have no recourse. Do you understand?”

I tried to meet her eye, to figure out whether she was back under the King’s control, but I couldn’t manage it. That, more than anything, convinced me that she was still free. She was being too careful to have been anything else.

“We understand,” I said. “We do not accept this arrest, but we understand.”

“Then enter, and plead your case before the King,” said Marlis. The doors swung open, apparently independent of any hand, and the guards moved through, pulling us with them.

As soon as the last guard was past the doorway, the doors slammed shut, rattling their frame with the force of their closure. I didn’t look back to see if Marlis had accompanied us. My attention was fixed on the front of the room, and on the feeling of slow rage blossoming in my chest like a poisonous flower. King Rhys was there, as I had expected, sitting on his throne like he belonged exactly where he was. The false Queen was next to him, a smug smile on her pale face. Neither of them was worthy of my attention, or my outrage.

It was only when I looked at the people standing in front of the dais that my anger found a purpose. May and Quentin were off to the side, their hands bound in front of them with delicate-looking loops of morning glory vine. As I watched, Quentin shifted positions and grimaced, looking pained. Whatever that vine was, it was nothing as innocuous as morning glory. It was hurting them.

“Sir Daye,” said King Rhys, rising. He struck a pose that was worthy of the King he was pretending to be: feet apart, shoulders square, arms crossed over his chest like his disapproval was his most powerful weapon. His guards continued marching us toward the throne, and he watched us come with a disappointed look on his face, clearly heartbroken by my supposed betrayal.

Bastard. “King Rhys,” I replied. I didn’t bow. He had lost the privilege of having me bow to him. “You want to tell me what this is all about? I’m here under the hospitality of your house. Maybe you do things differently in Silences, but in the Mists, we don’t arrest our guests unless they’ve actually done something wrong.”

“You have done something wrong,” said Rhys, still sounding profoundly disappointed. We had let him down; we had failed to live up to his lofty ideals. And if I had possessed any respect for the man whatsoever, that might have mattered to me. Sadly, under the circumstances, all he was doing was pissing me off. “You have plotted treason against my throne; you have brought seditious elements into my demesne. How do you plead, Sir Daye? What possible excuse can you have for what you have done?”

I folded my own arms, feeling a little silly in the trailing sleeves the false Queen had saddled me with. It’s hard to look like a force to be reckoned with when wearing something that a Disney princess would think was cute. “Since no one’s told me what I’ve done, I plead get your head out of your ass and start explaining yourself. I’m here to prevent a war, remember? What good would plotting treason do? I didn’t bring an army. I don’t even know how we’re getting back to the Mists if you don’t open a portal for us.” The bus, probably. Greyhound would be a real adventure with this bunch. “Also, there’s the whole ‘diplomatic immunity’ aspect of things. I have it, and so do my people. Plus we’re not your subjects, so while we can plot insurrection, we can’t be guilty of treason.”

“One of my maidservants stopped off at your quarters to clean and remove the laundry, as is only proper within a noble household. She was sparing you the effort of performing such menial chores yourself. But in her attempts to gather the washing, she found this.” Rhys unfolded his arms and gestured at one of the guards. The woman—whose face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion—moved to pick up a small chest from the edge of the dais. She turned back to us, holding up the chest like it was supposed to mean something.

Apparently it did, to at least one member of my little posse: Walther groaned, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose with one hand as he said, “That’s mine. It’s not treasonous for an alchemist to carry his supplies with him.”

“But it is treasonous for an alchemist to serve the deposed rulers of this land.” Rhys leaned over, opened the chest, and pulled out an amethyst bottle. It looked like it had been carved from a single impossibly large stone, with gold filigree around the top and bottom. Rhys held it up like it was proof of a crime. “Or do you deny that this is yours as well?”

“I am a cousin of the Yates family,” said Walther. “I never claimed I wasn’t. I never changed my last name—the only line of Tylwyth Teg to go by ‘Davies’ has long been known as related to the Yates line. But I don’t serve them. I didn’t come here to overthrow you. My service is to the Kingdom of the Mists, and I am here as Sir Daye’s private alchemist, to supply whatever potions or posies she requires.”

“I need a lot of potions and posies,” I said. “My complexion isn’t great—human blood, you know—and my hair gets frizzy when people use too much magic around me. And hoo, boy, you do not want to know about my digestion problems.” I gestured to Quentin. “And my squire over there—you do know that’s my squire, right? That you have detained and restrained my squire, without my permission, despite him being underage and hence my responsibility, rather than someone who’s capable of plotting treason on his own? I’m just checking, I don’t mean to imply that you don’t understand your own rules—anyway, he’s a teenage boy. Acne, weird rashes, chafing, they’re all on the table. You’d travel with your own alchemist, too, if you didn’t own a whole Kingdom full of them.”

Rhys blinked. Whatever response he’d been expecting, it apparently hadn’t been a bucket of refutations and denials.

Then Tybalt stepped forward.

It was a small gesture, as such things go: he moved less than a foot, bringing himself even with me. He didn’t even put himself in front of me. But as soon as he moved, the atmosphere in the room changed. King Rhys stiffened, attention going to Tybalt, and everything went very still.

“It may interest you to know that I have been a King of Cats for several hundred years,” said Tybalt. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Everyone in the room was listening. “During that time, I have had cause to learn much about the Divided Courts. Your quaint ideas of how Oberon would have us treat with one another. Your strange rules and aspirations toward power. I have enjoyed the company of your monarchs, even sat for a time at the High King’s table, back when the Westlands were still a novelty. I have seen corruption, and deceit, and all the other lovely ills to which the monarchy is heir. It is remarkable, really, how much effort you put into damaging the positions you create for yourselves. Does it entertain you? Is this how you fritter away the centuries?”

Rhys frowned. “I am sorry, but I don’t take your meaning.”

“My betrothed announced when she arrived here that she traveled with an alchemist. His relation to the family which once ruled here is public knowledge, as is his contented service in the Mists. He is no revolutionary, no redeemer; just a man who has no claim to the throne you hold, and no desire to hold it. She announced him to you, and now you rummage through his things like a common thief because . . . what reason could you possibly have?” Tybalt’s expression hardened, turning cold, until he was looking at Rhys the way he might look at a mouse. I didn’t see that expression much anymore, and every time I did, I was grateful that it wasn’t directed at me. “Given that you have spoken openly of wanting to exsanguinate Sir Daye in order to use her in your own alchemy, you’ll forgive me if I state that this seems less a matter of protecting your Kingdom, and more one of enriching your treasury through the body of the woman I love. If you do not present further evidence of this ‘treason,’ I shall have to assume I am correct in my reading of the situation—and I shall be forced to take that as any King would take such a thing, were it to be aimed at his lady love. I will take it as a declaration of war.”

“The Court of Cats will not go to war against a throne of Oberon’s declaration just because you bid them to, Your Majesty,” said Rhys. There was an oily coating on his words, making it clear that he thought Tybalt had just given him back the upper hand. “That would be foolish in the extreme, and if there’s one thing the Court of Cats has never been, it’s foolish.”

“I recommend you do not test my resolve unless you are sure you know my people more intimately than I do,” said Tybalt quietly.

Rhys paused. The false Queen, still seated on her throne, wasn’t smiling anymore. In that moment, I knew we’d won—the battle, at least. The war was still ongoing, and it wasn’t going to end until we left Silences. “It is . . . possible there was some mistake regarding the possessions of Sir Daye’s alchemist. It’s true that he announced his surname upon arrival; it’s also true that sometimes my people can be overzealous in their desire to please me. They are very loyal, you understand.” Rhys spoke slowly, choosing his words with much more care than he had only a few moments before.

“I understand loyalty well,” said Tybalt. “Many credit the Cu Sidhe as the most loyal souls in Faerie. Those people have never experienced the loyalty of the Cait Sidhe. Once someone is under our protection, they will remain there for the rest of their days.”

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me. If we’ve established that I’m not actually under arrest for harboring a traitor, could someone, I don’t know, let my people go? Because if my squire and my assistant are tied up for one more minute, without valid reason, I’m going to have some really interesting things to say about your Kingdom when I get home.”

Rhys glared at me. I glared back.

Silences might have the bigger army—would definitely have the bigger army, since Rhys wasn’t above using loyalty potions to get people to do what he wanted, while Arden actually had a moral core, however warped it had been by her slapdash upbringing—but it didn’t have bigger allies. If I went back to the Mists with stories of false allegations and abuses against purebloods, stories I could back up by giving blood memories to the Daoine Sidhe attached to the various Courts, we could join their armies to ours. Dianda would never stand for this sort of thing. I was willing to bet that whatever Undersea Duchy bordered on this part of Oregon wouldn’t be too happy about it either. And that didn’t even account for Angels and Golden Shore to the south, or Evergreens to the north, or Falls to the east. There were half a dozen Kingdoms and free Duchies that could become involved with this, if Rhys pushed me into it. Now the only question was . . . was he really that stupid?

Rhys might have gotten his Kingdom through politicking and appointment, but there was a reason he’d been able to hold it for a hundred years. He wasn’t a foolish man. A little hasty, maybe, with the false Queen spitting poison in his ear and making him feel invincible, but not foolish. He looked away, and I knew that we had won.

“Release Sir Daye’s people,” he said. “Return her alchemist’s things to him. Nothing has been taken, or broken.”

“Good,” said Walther. He stepped forward to claim the little chest, clearing his throat when King Rhys didn’t seem inclined to put the amethyst bottle back. Looking faintly offended, Rhys returned the bottle to its place. Walther closed the lid of the chest and retreated to his original position.

I noted all this out of the corner of my eye: the bulk of my attention was on the guards approaching May and Quentin, neither of whom had spoken through this whole ordeal. One of the guards removed a glass vial from his pocket. He uncorked it, and dripped three drops of clear liquid onto the vines holding May’s wrists. They promptly writhed and curled into a small green ball, like a flowered bezoar, which dropped to the floor. The guard repeated the process with Quentin.

Still neither one of them moved. King Rhys turned his head, facing them, and said in a loud, clear voice, “You may go.”

They both walked forward, their steps measured so that they moved together, as smooth and soulless as automatons. I swallowed the urge to shout even as it rose in my throat. I didn’t know that what I feared was happening was real. Maybe they were just staying quiet out of protest, and the desire not to make things worse.

Then they got close enough for me to see their eyes. Their pupils were dilated, and their normally sharp, focused gazes were soft and blank. I turned to Rhys, glaring mutely. He met my eyes and smiled. Just a little. Just enough that I knew he was my enemy. If everything that had come before had been politics, this was personal.

“They had to be sedated in order to keep them calm while we awaited your return,” he said. “Had you not run out of here the way you did, it might not have been necessary. You have my sincere apologies for any trouble this has caused. I’m sure you can understand why I would be wary of deceit from a diplomat belonging to a Kingdom we are on the cusp of war with—a diplomat who has already been known to depose monarchs she did not approve of.”

“Not sure this is how I’d go about making me approve of you,” I said tightly. I wanted to say more, but the eager way he watched me made me rein myself in. He was waiting for an opportunity to strike. Tybalt’s threat had been enough to cow him for the moment. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t move if he thought that he could get away with it. I swallowed my fury, cleared my throat, and said, “Don’t do this again.”

Rhys raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not raising my voice, I’m not yelling at you, and I think I’ve earned a moment of speaking on my own behalf, considering what you just tried to pull, so let me say it one more time, for the sake of clarity: don’t do this again. If you want to arrest me, fine, you’re the King here, you can arrest me. But if you don’t want it to be the biggest mistake of your political career, you’ll arrest me for something I did, rather than trying to trump up a crime you know damn well I didn’t commit. This wasn’t smart of you. It makes us both look bad. So don’t. Do it. Again.”

There was a long pause before Rhys nodded. “I will take your words under advisement, Sir Daye. You are free to leave my presence, as are your people. The night has been long, and we are planning to push it further. Return for a late dinner at the stroke of noon. We shall have a grand feast in your honor.”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” I said. I took Quentin’s hand, which he let me have without protest, and gestured for Tybalt to do the same with May. My fury raged against my breastbone, begging for its freedom, and the fact that I couldn’t grant it what it wanted was worse than the anger itself.

Together, the five of us walked out of the room, May and Quentin staring vacantly off into space, Walther clutching his chest as tightly as I held my squire’s hand. None of us spoke. If we had, I think Rhys would have found a lot more grounds to arrest us for treason. All he’d really needed to do was wait.