A Red Rose Chain

FOUR

I WAS SITTING ON THE trunk of a fallen redwood only feet away from the open doors of the Queen’s knowe, wondering whether I could find myself a new career, when Quentin came racing up the side of the hill. He stopped when he saw me, his eyes going wide as he took in my slumped, despondent posture. Tybalt was standing a short distance away, giving me my space. That, more than anything, explained Quentin’s cautious approach. If Tybalt, who was rarely afraid of anything, was standing out of hitting range, I was a clear and present danger to everyone around me.

I held my silence until Quentin was closer. Then I lifted my head off my hands, leaving my elbows resting on my knees, and said, “I need to ask you a question, and I need you to give me an honest answer. Not the answer you think I want to hear, and not the answer you want to be true, but the actual answer. All right?”

“All right,” said Quentin uncertainly.

“I’m not kidding, Quentin. If you lie to me, I will kick your ass all the way back to Toronto.”

“All right,” said Quentin again. He sounded more confident this time. If he was getting ready to lie to me, at least he was planning to do it with conviction.

“Would your father approve of you accompanying me to Silences right now? Because guess who’s just been appointed the ambassador in the Mists.” I jerked a thumb toward my chest. “Arden seems to think the best way to negotiate peace with a Kingdom that hates changelings is to send in your most irritating changeling knight.”

“And her Cait Sidhe fiancé, pray do not forget that,” said Tybalt. There was an edge to his words. “If you attempt to creep out while you think I am not looking, you will come to direly regret your actions.”

I leaned back until I caught his eye. “We’ve gone over this. I’m expected to bring a retinue. Since you’re a monarch in the Mists, you can either come as a King of Cats and thus officially throw your Court of Cats in with the Divided Courts, or you can stay here and not commit your people to a war they don’t want any part of.”

“I threw my lot in with the Divided Courts when I threw my lot in with you, and I will not take it back,” said Tybalt tersely. “I mean to accompany you, whether you will it or no.”

“He’s getting all Shakespearean,” I said, leaning forward and looking back to Quentin. “That means he’s coming with me. The question is, are you?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” said Quentin slowly. “I think this may actually be one of those situations where I need to call home and ask my dad. I can see where me being involved with negotiating a cease-fire could be really useful later on, you know? But I think my parents will be pissed off if I wind up sleeping for a hundred years.”

“Most people’s parents would be,” I agreed, and stood. “Come on. We need to get back to the house and tell May what’s going on. You need to call your folks, and I need to call the Luidaeg. She should know that I’m about to leave the Kingdom.”

Quentin blinked. “If we’re just going to turn around and go home, why did you have me drive all the way out here? I could’ve met you at the house.”

“Because I will not be accompanying you upon this leg of your journey,” said Tybalt. “Even as you must inform your companions of your intent to travel—”

“Is it really my intent if I’m doing it against my will?” I asked.

Tybalt rolled his eyes and continued without missing a beat: “—I must inform my Court that I will be away for a short time, pursuing a guarantee of their safety. I can convince them to be patient. Kings are not so vital in the day-to-day operation of a healthy Court that they will not let me go. Some may even be relieved by my absence, however brief. It can be difficult to feel as if you are truly wild when there is a keeper forever watching over you.”

I blinked. In all my dealings with the Court of Cats, I had never stopped to think about it that way. The Cait Sidhe made up part of their Court, but the rest consisted of runaway house pets, feral cats, and the changeling children of the Cait Sidhe themselves. Anyone who’s ever known a cat knows how much they prize their independence. As King, Tybalt was essentially cast in the role of caretaker. He set rules, provided food for the weak and defenseless, settled disputes, and generally did all the things for the Cait Sidhe that they didn’t want to do for themselves.

In an entire Court of the free, the King was the only one who was captive.

“Are you going to leave Raj in charge?” I asked.

Tybalt snorted. “No, for a great many reasons. He is not ready. He will be ready soon. Until that day arrives, I will not leave him on my throne. There is too much chance that his returning it to me would be seen as weakness, and prevent him from later claiming it as his own. I will leave Gabriel and Opal as my representatives. Gabriel has been of my guard for long enough that his presence will be accepted, and Opal is more adept at using the telephone than most of my people. Alazne is old enough now that she can be coaxed into one form over another if her mother puts in sufficient effort.”

Alazne was the only survivor of Gabriel and Opal’s first litter. Her three siblings had been killed when Oleander de Merelands poisoned the meat supply of Tybalt’s Court. It had been touch and go for Alazne for a long time, but she was finally growing out of her early medical issues, and into the rest of her long, long life as a pureblood Cait Sidhe. She was a good kid.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Meet us back at the house?”

“As soon as I may,” he said. “Should you need to relocate in the interim, please leave a note of some sort. I would hate to have to go looking for you.”

I smiled. “Will do.” I stood, leaning over to kiss him quickly before I started walking toward Quentin, and away from the knowe. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go home.” A faint waft of musk and pennyroyal from behind me told me that Tybalt was gone. It was time for us to be gone as well—time, and past time.

Quentin was quiet as we navigated the hill back down to the park, and walked through the park to the lot where my car was waiting. He stayed quiet—uncharacteristically so—as we got into the car. I cast a quick don’t-look-here and started the engine, pulling out onto the main road. I glanced at him a few times, but decided to wait until we were on the freeway. If he hadn’t at least turned on the radio by then, I would ask him what was wrong.

We reached the freeway with the silence still hanging between us like a knife on a string. I cleared my throat. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to let you go without me.” His voice was very small. “I hate that you have to treat me like . . . I never wanted you to know. Not until I was ready to leave my fosterage and take my family name again. I didn’t want you to treat me differently.”

“Oh,” I said.

Quentin was the Crown Prince of North America. One day, he would control the continent. And I hadn’t known that when he became my squire. He’d been sent to Shadowed Hills on a blind fosterage, which meant that no one other than Sylvester had known who his parents were, and that none of the rest of us were allowed to try to find out. For a long time, I’d assumed he was minor nobility at best, since his parents seemed perfectly cool with letting him become a changeling’s squire and run around the Mists getting shot at and hanging out with the sea witch. It had been . . . well, a shock to discover that actually, his parents thought spending time with me would make him a better King one day.

“I’ve tried really hard not to treat you any differently,” I said carefully. “It’s been difficult sometimes. But you still have to do the dishes when it’s your turn, and I took you to fight the big black dogs without going ‘oh no, I could hurt the Crown Prince.’ Honestly, I would have wanted you to stay behind even before I knew—I would probably have insisted. It’s only the fact that you’re going to be High King someday that makes me think this is something you should see.”

“It still feels like I’m being punished for being a prince,” he said.

“Let me ask you something. If this had come up while you were still concealing your identity from me, and if I had been temporarily out of my senses enough to ask you to come along, would you have been willing to just grab your things and follow me to Silences? Or would you have called home and asked your parents if they’d mind?”

His silence was answer enough. He would have checked in. That was reassuring—it meant I hadn’t completely converted him to my particular school of “go ahead, rush straight into danger, it’s fun.” It also put a lot of past events into a new perspective. If he’d been checking in all along, the High King and Queen must have really believed in the idea of preparing their heir for anything.

“So see? The only thing that’s changed is that now I ask you to call them, rather than you having to sneak around and do it behind my back. I’ve never been happy about hauling you into danger, and I’ve never pretended to be.” I flashed him a quick smile. “I think this is a good thing. I like it when we’re not keeping as many secrets.”

Quentin smiled hesitantly back. “I guess so.” He paused before asking, “So why is Arden making you go to Silences? I mean, it’s not like you have any ambassadorial experience.”

“Funny thing: I don’t think anyone in the current nobility does,” I said grimly. “Sylvester is busy in Shadowed Hills, and he’s our most experienced hero. If we actually go to war, Arden is going to need him here to organize the troops. Li Qin is a scholar. April is . . . April is April. Even if she could travel that far, she’s more likely to accidentally start a war than intentionally prevent one. We could ask Saltmist to loan us someone, but they don’t really do diplomacy, unless you count Dianda going ‘stop hitting yourself’ over and over again. There may be some diplomats in Wild Strawberries or Deep Mists or someplace, but none of them will have seen any action since the War of Silences, when they were working for the woman who’s now trying to declare war on the rest of us.” Simon Torquill had been a diplomat, once upon a time: that was part of why he had a title but no lands. As the less martial of the brothers Torquill, it was his job to solve problems before they got out of hand and required Sylvester to come along with an army. Unfortunately, Simon was asleep, and was going to stay that way for a century. He wasn’t going to help us with this war.

Sometimes I think Faerie goes to war as much because we can’t find anyone who’d rather talk things out as for any other reason. Diplomacy is not a valued skill among the Courts. Most of our nobles would prefer to do the dance of manners and then slide a knife between someone’s ribs. It’s more fun than actually discussing trade sanctions and why it’s rude to kill your neighbors.

“Okay, I guess, but why you?” asked Quentin. “You’re . . . not really that diplomatic.”

“You mean I’m a blunt instrument being sent to do a scalpel’s job,” I said. Quentin nodded. I shrugged. “When I found Arden, she and I had an argument about how to handle things. I sort of grabbed her without her permission. So she’s punishing me.”

Quentin looked suitably horrified at the idea that I had grabbed the Queen in the Mists without her consent. He shook it off and pushed on, saying, “Maybe, but she’s not stupid. If she thought that punishing you like this would result in a war, she wouldn’t do it. So she must think you can argue your way out of a war.”

“I did it once, I guess,” I said dryly, before leaning forward and turning on the radio. “I want to think. Feel free to critique my taste in music.”

“I always feel free to do that,” said Quentin, and promptly changed the station.

He was right about one thing: if Arden wanted me to be the ambassador in the Mists, she had to think it would somehow benefit the Kingdom. It was too specific to be a punishment she’d come up with on the spot. Fine, then. How could I benefit the Kingdom? Well, I could yell at the King of Silences until he agreed not to go to war. Awkward, but potentially effective. I could try to talk some sense into the former Queen of the Mists. I could—

Wait. “Quentin, do ambassadors get diplomatic immunity?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only way to prevent assassinations at major court functions. Not that it actually prevents them, but it makes them less common than they would be otherwise. No one wants to deal with a dead body on the dessert cart.”

“And people say I’m desensitizing you to violence,” I said. “So here’s a theory for you: Arden is sending me because this way I’ll have diplomatic immunity, which means the King of Silences can’t arrest me on the spot. That gives everyone back here time to come up with a better plan for getting through this alive. In the meanwhile, we’re in Silences with the former Queen, who hates me. That means she’s a lot more likely to lose her temper and do something that violates hospitality.” Which I would probably survive, given my own nigh-indestructability.

It was only nigh, not complete, which meant I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this plan, but I could see the logic. If my presence could provoke the former Queen into doing something inappropriate, we might be able to call this whole thing off—High King Sollys couldn’t prevent his subordinate kingdoms from going to war, but he could step in if one of them broke the rules of engagement. Of course, I could get stabbed a few dozen times in the process. Sadly, as I had come to learn, sometimes being a pincushion is my purpose in life.

The kitchen light was on when I pulled into the covered parking space next to our house. We lived in a beautiful old Victorian that had been purchased by Sylvester Torquill shortly after it was constructed, and used as a rental property until the day I agreed to let him move me into something safer than my apartment. Most of the neighbors hated us in an offhand sort of manner, since we had twice the space they did, plus a parking area and a small yard—all things virtually unheard of in modern-day San Francisco. I was sure they’d change their minds if they knew how much I’d bled to earn that house.

Or maybe not. Reserved parking is hard to come by in this city.

Quentin, as always, walked ahead while I locked up the car. Arden’s promised snack hadn’t materialized, due to Madden having been elf-shot, and Quentin was probably starving. Keeping a teenage boy away from food for the better part of a night isn’t actually torture, but it can definitely seem like it to them. I followed at a more decorous pace, tucking my keys into the pocket of my leather jacket. If there was one thing living with Quentin had taught me, it was not to get between him and the refrigerator at moments like this.

May and Jazz sat at the table in the breakfast nook, polishing off the remains of what looked like an ice cream sundae the size of my head. It’s good to have goals. They were looking up when I arrived, courtesy of Quentin, who was already digging through the fridge with the manic intensity of a man who had just been informed that there was never going to be food ever again.

“Long night?” asked May sympathetically. As my former death omen, she was unique in all of Faerie: a Fetch whose existence was no longer directly tied to any one person’s survival. Amandine had somehow severed the bond between us when she shifted the balance of my blood away from human to save my life. This had left May with a copy of my original face, all soft changeling edges and bluntly-pointed ears, and a level of indestructability that even I couldn’t match. She seemed pretty happy about the situation.

We’d been living together since she first appeared. People used to mistake us for each other, but that hadn’t happened in a while. It helped that May’s style was best described as “Jem and the Holograms meets Rainbow Brite.” Her spiky brown hair had been bleached to within an inch of its life and dyed in a variety of pinks and purples, and she was wearing a tie-dyed cotton sundress. Between that and the increasing sharpness of my features, anyone who could mistake us for each other was either legally blind or had recently been hit in the head.

“Long, and getting longer,” I said. “Nights like this, I wish I still drank coffee. Quentin, can you make me a sandwich, too, while you’re rooting through the fridge like—Oberon’s ass, I don’t know, something that roots. I’m too tired to insult you.”

“Wow, you are tired,” said Jazz, May’s live-in girlfriend. She was a Raven-maid, with long black hair, warm brown skin, and eyes rimmed in avian gold. The band of black feathers tied in her ponytail held her fae nature; without it, she would have been as human as any of our neighbors. Skinshifters are somewhat odd, even by fae standards. Raven-maids and Raven-men are even odder, since they’re diurnal when most of the rest of Faerie is nocturnal. May and Jazz’s relationship was a love story about missed sleep, compromises, and working around differences. In that regard, it wasn’t that different from my relationship with Tybalt.

At least we all got along, for the most part. Not bad for a changeling, a cat, a death omen, a bird, and a prince in hiding.

“Yeah, well.” I leaned up against the counter, half watching Quentin as he emptied the fridge onto the table. We were apparently having leftover pot roast sandwiches, with mashed potatoes and cranberry jam. I’d eaten stranger. “I don’t really know how to give the short version of this, so here’s the badly edited one: the Kingdom of Silences has declared war on the Mists for the crime of unrightfully deposing our former Queen. One of their people elf-shot Madden—I have the arrow that came with the message, I’ll be taking it to Walther this afternoon. Arden tried to run. We tracked her down, things got a little heated, I grabbed her without permission, and as my punishment, she’s making me go to Silences as the ambassador in the Mists. Hopefully, we can get this all sorted out before I convince them that they should slaughter us all in our beds.”

May blinked. Jazz blinked. Both of them stared at me like this was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard.

Finally, Jazz spoke. “They’re sending you as a diplomat?” she asked, with exquisite care. Right then, she proved that she was more of a diplomat than I would ever be. “Did you explain to Queen Windermere why that might not be the . . . smartest choice?”

“I tried,” I said. “She’s pretty set on the idea. I think she’s trying less for ‘Toby goes to Silences, smooths everything out, hooray,’ and more for ‘Toby infuriates them so badly that they can’t remember which end of the sword to use.’ It’s a terrible plan.”

“I don’t know,” said May. “I was a diplomat once—well, a couple of times, but only once that I really remember. Super-annoying ambassadors have their place, too. Sending someone you know the other side will hate keeps them from being too comfortable during the negotiations, while also letting them know that they can’t just dismiss your emissary. If they do, you can claim that they never really wanted to work in good faith, and that justifies burning a lot more stuff down.”

“And in the meantime, Arden and Lowri can get together with the local nobles and come up with a plan for getting through the war alive, if it actually happens,” I said. Before she became a Fetch, May was a night-haunt, one of the dark secrets of Faerie. They eat the dead, and because memory is hidden in the blood, they take on the faces of their meals. The night-haunts remember things that happened to people who they never really were. “If you were a diplomat, you died. How did you die?”

“Um. Poison once, and I sort of got stabbed the other time.” May’s cheeks reddened. “Maybe that wasn’t as encouraging as I wanted it to be.”

“No, it was totally encouraging, if you’re encouraging me to get stabbed.” I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “I need to call the Luidaeg. She’s going to be pissed at me for finding a new way to try to get myself killed, but maybe she can give me some advice.”

“Pretty sure her advice will be ‘don’t go,’” said Jazz.

I chuckled bitterly. “Pretty sure you’re right.”

May pushed her chair back from the table, standing. “I’ll go pack.”

“Uh, what?” I stared at her. “No, you will not. Sit your butt back down. You’re staying here.”

May raised one eyebrow, an expression so familiar that I didn’t need to wonder what it meant. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you just told me to stay here in the Mists while you run off to Silences to get yourself killed. Is there a planet where that would work? I’d love to visit there sometime, just to see what it’s like.”

“We’re on that planet,” I said firmly. “Sit back down. I need you to stay here.”

“Because . . . ? Seriously, Toby, I want to know why you think leaving your indestructible, incredibly useful sister behind is a good idea. I won’t lie, I’m not feeling it.” May crossed her arms and glowered at me. “I should be with you on this one. I have actual experience.”

“You have someone else’s experience,” I said. “You’ve told me yourself that most of your memories come from either me or Dare, since we were the last two people you shared blood with as a night-haunt. We color everything you remember. Neither one of us was ever what you’d call a diplomat.” I’d improved since the cutoff point between May’s memories and my real life—I hadn’t been given much of a choice—but the woman I’d been when May tasted my blood and took my face had never been forced to learn how to rein herself in. That woman was long dead, thankfully, buried under the weight of the experiences I’d had since then, but part of her lived on, in May.

“And? You have to take backup with you, or we’re getting you back in a box.”

“I’m going to call home and see whether my parents want me to go with Toby,” said Quentin, walking over and handing me the plate with my sandwich. “I’m going to do that now.” He waved to May and Jazz as he walked out of the kitchen, presumably to make his phone call someplace that was more private, and maybe quieter. The fact that he’d be out of the blast radius was nothing but a bonus.

May didn’t say a word. She just pointed after Quentin, her arm stiff and trembling slightly with anger.

“Quentin is my squire,” I said. “It looks stranger if he doesn’t come with me than if he does. No one knows about where he comes from but us, Tybalt, and Arden. Nobody in Silences is going to stand up and say, ‘Hey, that kid looks the way the Crown Prince was rumored to look back before his parents hid him. Let’s take him hostage.’”

“They might,” snapped May. “You’re being stupid. You need to take me with you.”

“I’m already taking Quentin—maybe—and Tybalt,” I said. “Since there’s a good chance Arden will want to send someone with me to keep an eye on things, I’d say the party is about full. Bringing you and Jazz along starts to look like an entourage.”

“Hang on there,” said Jazz, looking suddenly alarmed. “Who said anything about me coming with you? I’m not going with you. I’m staying right here to feed the cats and Spike and not get used as target practice by some Silences archer who thinks ravens make good stew.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry, Jazz. I just assumed . . .”

“You can stop assuming, honest. I love May. She’s a big girl. A big, indestructible girl. I am not an indestructible girl. When there’s a war, I stay away from the battlefield until the killing is over and the scavenging begins.” May and I gave her matching appalled looks. Jazz shrugged. “When I’m a woman, I eat Pop-Tarts and vindaloo. When I’m a big black bird, I eat eyeballs and spleens. It’s all part of the glorious contradiction that is me.”

“Ew,” I said.

“She brushes her teeth before I let her kiss me. She brushes her teeth a lot,” said May. She turned back to me, sighed, and said, “I didn’t want to play this card, but here it is. You’re either taking me or you’re taking Stacy. Who would you rather have with you in a dangerous Court? Your roommate who can’t be killed, or your thin-blooded best friend with five kids who depend on her?”

I frowned. “Why would I take either one of you?”

“Because you don’t know how to style your own hair,” said May, with a shrug. “You’re bad at doing makeup, your idea of ‘court formal’ is actually offensive, and you usually look like you forgot how to operate a hairbrush. We’re used to you around here—you’re even sort of endearing, since you’re all ‘local girl made good’ and ‘Duke Torquill’s pet project’—but in Silences? Where they already think of changelings as being inferior to purebloods? You have to be better than you have ever been. Better groomed, better prepared, and better braced for what’s going to hit you. You need a lady’s maid, October. Given your friends, it’s either me or Stacy. Now pick one.”

I stared at her for a moment, open-mouthed and stunned into silence. I had never even considered how I was going to dress for the Court of Silences, or how they were going to judge me on things like how I wore my hair. It was stupid, and shouldn’t have mattered when there was a war on the horizon . . . and May was right. It did matter.

“Go pack your things,” I said finally. “We’re going to get some sleep, and we’ll head for Muir Woods as soon as we wake up. Arden will open a portal to Portland for us. After that, we’re on our own.” I pushed away from the counter, taking my untouched sandwich with me.

“Where are you going?” asked May.

“To call the Luidaeg,” I said. “I figure I may as well let everyone yell at me at once.” I didn’t look back as I walked out of the kitchen, leaving the two of them behind.