Once Broken Faith

NINETEEN

MADDEN AND I WERE out of the dining room and running down the hall before I realized that Quentin was running next to me. I couldn’t glare at him without stopping or losing my step, so I contented myself with shooting him a sharp sidelong look.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“Being a good squire,” he said. There was a stubborn note in his voice that seemed first incongruous, and then so familiar that I could have laughed, if it wouldn’t have made me start crying. He sounded like me. He sounded exactly like me.

“Just don’t get yourself killed,” I said, and kept running, following Madden’s lead.

The halls weren’t empty. Members of Arden’s staff were moving here and there, carrying linens or trays from one room to another. Maintenance was always a challenge in a knowe this size, and having this many people in residence, however temporarily, made the job harder. Some of these people probably hadn’t slept in days, and wouldn’t until the conclave ended. They moved aside when they saw Madden coming, and stayed pressed against the walls as we passed. Madden paid them no real mind, and so I didn’t either. We were trusting in his nose right now, and if I started to question it, we would have nothing. Better to follow this lead than to harass some poor, confused kitchen staffer who just wanted to get the dishes put away.

We ran until we reached a closed door. Madden stopped there, barking. I stepped past him and tugged on the handle, revealing the stairs on the other side. Madden took off immediately, rushing past me, onward and upward. I followed him, and Quentin followed me, and there was nothing in the world but running. It was almost nice. While we were in pursuit, I didn’t have to think about the past or the future, what had happened or what was to come. I only needed to think about where I was going, about making sure my feet hit the steps and not the empty air. If I fell, I’d get back up again, but we would lose time, and time was something we didn’t have to spare.

The stairs ended in another door. Here, Madden stopped, but didn’t bark; instead, he pawed at the landing, blunt claws making a faint scraping noise. He followed the motion with an expectant look from me to the door and back again. I didn’t have to be a genius to know what he wanted. I turned to Quentin, making a wholly unnecessary shushing motion, and reached for the door handle.

It wasn’t locked. I pushed the door gently open, revealing a guest parlor. It looked similar to the main room of Patrick and Dianda’s suite, save for the absence of a pond in the middle of the floor. Which made sense: a pond was the sort of feature most people would find more inconvenient and perplexing than anything else. The furniture was all redwood and purple velvet, and the open windows looked out on the high forest. There were no people in evidence.

Madden drew back his lips, showing his teeth, while his throat vibrated in an almost silent snarl. I placed a hand on his head, letting him know I understood, before drawing Sylvester’s sword and starting into the room. If anyone came at me, I would be prepared. More importantly, I would be between them and Quentin.

Would it be murder if I killed the people who’d hurt Tybalt, who’d killed King Antonio? Or would it be punishment for their own violations of the Law? I’d been forgiven by the High King once before, when I’d killed Blind Michael. He could forgive me again if it came to that, and in the end, it didn’t matter. If I killed them, it would be because they needed to die. Because they’d done too much damage. Because they’d come into a situation that could have been bloodless, even peaceful, and turned it into something terrible. Would Duke Michel have attacked Dianda if there hadn’t already been a murder, giving him a convenient scapegoat for the crime? We had never needed to fight this way.

And that was all just pretty words. If I killed them, it was going to be because they’d hurt Tybalt. They had tried to take him away from me. They might even have succeeded, at least for a century. A century! I was a changeling. No one had the right to make me wait that long for anything. I wanted them to hurt.

We crept across the parlor, Madden in the lead, until we reached a half-closed door in an ornate frame that looked like pile upon pile of evergreen branches. We stopped there, Quentin behind me, Madden still slightly ahead, although he was crouching until his belly brushed the carpet. Someone on the other side of the door was weeping.

“Stop your caterwauling and lay out my dress,” snapped a voice. “The cat’s dead by now. There’s no way he survived a shaft to the lung. The High King will call the conclave back to order at any moment, and we need to be in our seats looking properly contrite when the lecturing begins. As if that foolish populist knows the first thing about ruling, or how it’s meant to be done.”

The crying continued. Another voice, this one male, said, “Be glad we haven’t punished you for missing the first time. You should have killed him before, not wounded the other one. She would have been off the scent if you’d killed the cat. Everyone knows the little Torquill bitch is besotted with the cat-king. She’ll never be able to serve with him gone.”

It was nice to have some of my suspicions confirmed. I tensed, motioning for Quentin to stay behind me, and stepped forward. It was a simple matter to kick the door open, slamming it against the wall and revealing the dressing room on the other side. The King and Queen of Highmountain turned to gape at me. Their silent, shivering handmaiden was standing between them, her hands pressed over her face. She was pale, seeming to have less substance than she should have, even though she took up space like anyone else. I breathed in almost unconsciously, looking for the scent of her magic. I couldn’t find it, but I didn’t need to.

The Barrow Wight had been the attacker, at the orders of her lieges. Her heritage explained the strength behind the attacks. Barrow Wights are surprisingly strong for their size, probably because they need to be able to move heavy stones in order to access the burial mounds where they traditionally make their homes.

“You can’t be here,” snapped Verona.

“Is that blood? Is it yours?” asked Kabos, sounding fascinated and horrified at the same time. He was Daoine Sidhe; of course he wanted to know whose blood I carried with me, whose secrets could be teased from the stains on my clothing and skin.

I moved Sylvester’s sword between us, aiming the point at his chest. In that moment, I wished for a gun, a bow and arrow, for anything that would have allowed me to end his pitiful existence without having to depend on my paltry skills with a blade. Sylvester had done his best to teach me, but my lessons had been more than a year ago, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if they fought back.

“In the name of High King Aethlin and High Queen Maida Sollys of the Westlands, you are under arrest for the death of King Antonio Robertson of Angels,” I said, voice tight and angry in my throat. There was nothing I could do to keep my fury from showing, so I didn’t even try.

Verona looked momentarily surprised. Then, slowly, she smiled. “One death,” she said. “You’re accusing us of one death. Is your beast-man lover still breathing, then? That’s a pity. It would have been nice if the world could have been that much cleaner. Whoever hurt him was trying to do you a favor, darling. Imagine the children.”

I snarled and started to step forward. A hand on my arm stopped me. I glanced to the side. Quentin had hold of me and was shaking his head, expression grim.

“Don’t,” he said. “She’s not worth it.”

“I am a Queen, child,” snapped Verona. “You’re what, a squire? The second son of some noble too minor to keep their spare offspring from being given into a changeling’s care? You have no right to judge my worth.”

I’d been there when people said similar things to Quentin, but that had been before I knew his true identity. This time, I could see the struggle in his eyes. He outranked this woman, even as a Prince; it would have been well within his parents’ power to strip the regents of Highmountain of their thrones and give them to whomever Quentin chose. And instead, for the sake of his blind fosterage, Quentin had to let them say whatever they wanted to him, and just take it. He’d been living with this ever since he’d arrived in the Bay Area, and it was a miracle he’d borne it as well as he had.

“I suppose I don’t,” he said. “But I’m not a murderer, so there’s that.”

“But neither are we,” said Kabos, sounding offended, like he couldn’t understand why we were still talking about this when it was so clearly unnecessary. “I never hurt anyone. Neither did my dear Verona. We can’t be held responsible for the actions of our servants.”

The handmaiden was still covering her face with her hands, narrow shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping herself together. I gaped at the rulers of Highmountain, the extent of what they’d done—if not why—finally beginning to make itself clear.

Oberon’s Law was simple, to prevent misinterpretation. Killing a pureblood outside of a formally declared war was a crime punishable by death. Forgiveness for breaking the Law was possible only under the most extremely extenuating circumstances, such as when I had killed Blind Michael—and even then, there would always be people who thought the punishments laid down by Oberon should have trumped any forgiveness the world chose to offer. Nowhere in the Law did it say “but it’s okay if someone else made you do it.” Nowhere did it say “if the people who control your life order you to take someone else’s, we will find a way to forgive you.”

“Arrest her,” said Verona, flapping a hand in the direction of her handmaid. “Take her away. She was never a very good servant, anyway. Always wrinkled my gowns and pulled my hair. Her little sister will be a much better ladies’ maid, I’m sure, now that she understands what the job entails.”

The handmaid’s shoulders stopped shaking. It was a small change, but a palpable one. Before, we’d been in the company of a living, if terrified, person. Now we were standing next to a statue.

“We did nothing,” said Kabos. “The High King can ride our blood, and all he’ll find is the truth: that we never laid a hand on anyone. We are innocent.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I spat.

“No?” Verona raised an eyebrow. “We can’t be held responsible for our thoughts, surely. That would be unjust and wrong. You, of all people, who has fought so hard for the rights of the deposed, must want us to be judged on what we’ve done, and not what we may have thought of doing.”

The handmaid lowered her hands from her face. She was pretty, if pale, in the way of Barrow Wights; most of them stayed in their mounds, avoiding the company of the living, who moved too fast and wanted too much. Stacy’s ancestors, whoever they may have been, would have been considered strange by their pureblood kin for loving another of the fae, even if it had only been for a night. Barrow Wights kept to themselves.

“Don’t touch my sister,” she said, in a voice like wind through a graveyard, thin and cold and filled with ghosts. “She isn’t yours. That wasn’t what you promised me.”

“We never promised you anything,” said Verona.

“I’m the one with the sword here, so maybe you could stop arguing and just agree that I’m arresting you all, okay?” I straightened the arm holding Sylvester’s sword, trying to look like I wasn’t confused and covered in blood. Tybalt’s blood. The thought made it easier to lock my shoulders and glare. “The High King can sort this out.” I could ask him to be merciful, if he found that the Barrow Wight girl really hadn’t been given a choice in what she’d done.

I didn’t want him to be merciful. I wanted her to burn. I wanted them all to burn. But that was why it was so important that someone else be involved in this. She’d hurt Tybalt. Whether she’d done it because someone else had forced her to or not, she had hurt him. That didn’t mean the people who’d turned her into a weapon and aimed her at their targets deserved to get off without punishment. If anything, it meant exactly the opposite. They needed to be punished. They needed to understand that what they had done was wrong. And under the Law, they just might get away with it.

“You said that if I did as you ordered, you would leave my family alone,” said the Barrow Wight doggedly. “You promised.”

“Promises don’t count when they’re made to the lower classes,” said Kabos.

Madden crouched suddenly, snarling in the back of his throat. I glanced down at him, taking my eyes off the scene for a moment.

It was long enough.

There was a cracking sound, followed by Verona, screaming. I whipped around. The King of Highmountain was sprawled on the floor, eyes open, neck bent at an unnatural angle. The Barrow Wight handmaid was next to him, breathing heavily, her features distorted into something more gargoyle than human, her mouth bristling with teeth. I stared. I’d heard stories of the Barrow Wights and their true faces, but Stacy’s Barrow heritage was distant enough that she had no second face to hide—only the one she wore on the outside. This was what they were, down in the dark, where passing for human had never been a concern.

“Never touch her!” she snarled, and leaped for the screaming Verona.

I lunged forward, intending to put myself between them. There was a sound like ripping metal, and the world stopped—

—only for me to stumble into an empty room. The body of the king was still there, sprawled on the floor. The night-haunts hadn’t come yet. Verona and the handmaid were gone. So were Quentin and Madden. I was alone.

Panic surged through my veins, followed by a cold, implacable fury. These people had turned a subject into a sword. From the things she’d said—and more, the way she’d said them—they had done it by holding her sister’s safety hostage. It was a good technique, if you wanted to keep your hands technically clean while accomplishing the unthinkable. It was a technique that didn’t leave much question about how far you would go to accomplish your goals. These people would go all the way, if that was what they considered necessary.

Only the plural was wrong now, wasn’t it? Queen Verona of Highmountain was alone, and like any widow, she was going to be grieving. She was going to be looking for someone to blame. The people who had caused her to goad her handmaiden into lashing out were going to seem like excellent targets. I dropped to my knees beside the body of the king, not quite realizing what I was about to do until the sword was pressed against the unbroken skin of his arm, and I was slicing through his flesh, looking for the cooling blood beneath. Not cooling; cooled. It bubbled slowly to the surface, thick and deoxygenated after the amount of time it had spent sitting in the dead man’s veins.

I ran my fingers through the clotted mass, bringing them to my lips and sucking them clean. Images flashed into focus at the back of my eyes: Kabos dancing with Verona on a balcony looking down on the city of Denver; Verona proposing they take advantage of this conclave to make things better for themselves in the Westlands; the handmaiden, whose name was Minna, weeping in the back of the coach that had carried them from Colorado to California. They were more impressions than full memories, perhaps due to the age of the blood, but they were enough for me to be sure of where the guilt in this terrible situation truly lay.

That wasn’t going to save the handmaiden. She had killed at least two people, both of them kings. No matter how good her reasons had been, no matter how much duress she had been under, she was going to be punished. If Tybalt died, or if she had hurt Quentin . . .

I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t going to kill her myself.

Kabos had been dead before the world froze. I looked back at where I’d been standing, and was unsurprised to see the crushed remains of a red-spotted toadstool ground into the carpet. Another fairy ring, and I’d leaped straight into it. I had no way of detecting them or knowing how long they’d last—or how long that one had lasted before it let me go. Long enough for King Kabos’ body to cool. Not long enough for the night-haunts to come.

Too long.

Neither Barrow Wights nor Daoine Sidhe could teleport, which meant that wherever Verona, her handmaid, and the boys had gone, they had gone there on foot. I looked over my shoulder to the open door before looking back to the room. I paused. The floor was polished hardwood. Like all the floors in the knowe, it was impeccably clean. So where had that length of daffodil-colored thread come from, if not the lining of Quentin’s vest?

“Clever boy,” I murmured. Holding Sylvester’s sword unsheathed and low against my hip, I rose and started deeper into the chambers assigned to this particular pair of visiting monarchs.

I wanted to shout for help: I wanted to bring down the roof, if that was what I had to do in order to get Quentin and Madden back. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. The knowe couldn’t answer in words, assuming it was even interested in helping me, and the only person I would have trusted to hear her name no matter where it was spoken—April—wasn’t here. I was on my own, at least temporarily.

There was a time when I’d only ever been on my own. It hadn’t been so long ago that I didn’t remember how it worked. I walked from the receiving room into a short hallway, which seemed extravagant even for housing intended for royalty, and paused. There were three doors, all closed. None of them looked any more or less likely than the others; all three looked like they would lead, one way or the other, to the outside wall of the knowe. Arden was fond of giving her guests sweeping views to remind them of the majesty of her kingdom, like a tour guide with some very specific goals in mind. I hesitated, looking from one door to the next, trying to decide which one made the most sense.

As I waited, I breathed. And as I breathed, the scent of blood tickled my nose. It wasn’t mine, or Tybalt’s, or King Kabos’. It was almost buried beneath all those other layers of bloodshed, faint enough that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been forced to take my time and decide which way to go. It was coming from behind the central door. Still, I hesitated, looking toward the door on my right. This might be a trap, or it might be Quentin leaving me a clue.

My dress didn’t have pockets. It did have hems, and I was carrying a sword. I sawed off a chunk of heavy, blood-soaked fabric, wadding it into a ball, and lobbed it in a gentle underhand arc toward the right-hand door. The fabric stopped in midair, hanging suspended for an instant before vanishing. A fairy ring. They had closed the doors they didn’t use with fairy rings. It was a logical, effective choice, and I wished to Oberon that they hadn’t thought to make it, because this was going to make an already difficult process unbearably hard.

But Quentin—and the more I breathed, the more I knew that it was him; the blood was whispering tales, even if it was too far away for me to taste it and be absolutely certain—had been smart enough to anticipate this problem, and had left me a trail to follow. I stepped cautiously forward. Time didn’t stop. I reached for the doorknob, waiting for the world to freeze around me. When it didn’t happen, I turned the knob and pushed the door open, revealing the elegant, mostly empty bedchamber on the other side. As in the Luidaeg’s rooms, one wall had been replaced by glass panes, looking out on the redwoods.

Unlike in the Luidaeg’s room, one of those panes had been smashed. No shards littered the polished redwood floor; the glass had been smashed outward, not inward. The smell of blood was stronger here. Quentin had cut himself on the glass. There: as I got closer, I spotted a small triangle of glass jutting from the frame, the edge of it outlined in red. There wasn’t much blood. Verona probably hadn’t even noticed it happen. As a Daoine Sidhe, she was attuned to blood, but experience had taught me that the normal Daoine Sidhe attunement was nothing compared to the appeal blood held for one of the Dóchas Sidhe.

I plucked the piece of glass from the frame, tucking it into the bodice of my gown. It didn’t matter if it cut me; I’d heal. There was no way I was leaving Quentin’s blood lying around for anyone to find. Not given who he was, and the secrets he was trying to keep. I took one more step forward, to the very edge of the broken glass, and blanched, feeling my stomach do a slow tuck-and-roll.

This room might not have been one of the highest points in the knowe, but it was more than high enough. The window wall looked out on an endless sea of redwoods, and the drop between me and the ground was easily fifty feet, maybe more. We were in the Summerlands, after all, where the laws of nature were superseded by the laws of Faerie, which were much more forgiving in certain ways.

None of the people I was looking for could fly. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and looked again.

Far below me in the gloom—at least fifteen feet straight down—one of the wooden paths that Arden’s people used to move through the trees wound its way into the darkness. Verona was a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe, and could possibly have some sort of spell in her arsenal to allow them to make the drop in safety. Fifty feet was too much, but fifteen? That wasn’t out of the question. They could be down there.

If they were, and I was hesitating here, then I was allowing them to get even more of a head start on me—not good, since I had no idea how long I’d been trapped in that fairy ring. If they weren’t, and I jumped down to follow them, I’d have to find a way back up in order to resume my pursuit. That could be the last straw. Quentin needed me following him, not running off on some wild goose chase.

Carefully, I leaned far enough out the open window to look to either side, searching for another way out of here. There wasn’t one: the room ended in a sheer drop, an artificial redwood cliff face descending down into the misty dark. They hadn’t gone back, I was sure of that; Quentin didn’t heal the way I did, and would have still been bleeding if he’d been dragged out to the hall. There would have been some sort of sign, a trace for me to follow. They must have gone down. There was no other option.

“Oh, this is gonna suck,” I muttered, and took three long steps back before I broke into a run, hit the edge of the room, and leaped out into the air.

Falling is easy. Anyone can fall. Landing without breaking multiple bones is a harder problem. I plummeted through the redwood-scented green, branches whipping at my face and arms. It was all I could do to keep one arm in front of my face, preventing the branches from hitting me in the eye. With my luck, I’d blind myself before I landed, and have to wait for that to heal before I could start moving again.

The path rushed up at me faster than I would have thought was possible, and I braced myself for impact as well as I could. I hit hard, and felt my ankle shatter under the pressure. The pain was sudden and immense, blocking out the rest of the world. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, rolling to bleed off my momentum. I thought I was rolling with the curve of the path until it dropped away, and I was falling again.

Years of struggling not to die when the entire world seemed determined to make it happen had honed my reflexes to an amazing degree. My hands shot out before I’d fully realized what was happening, grabbing the edge of the path and stopping my descent. I hung there, clinging to the wood, panting, with waves of pain rushing outward from my ankle and filling my entire body. Every time I thought the worst of it was past, another wave would hit, and I’d black out for a second. Not ideal for someone who was dangling above a seemingly infinite drop.

I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. I fall off things with dismaying frequency. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it, and the thought of how much more it would hurt if I broke every bone in my entire body was terrifying. At least the path had been treated with some sort of water-repellent; the wood was dry under my fingers, and I wasn’t slipping. That would have been a step too far.

Quentin needed me. Madden needed me. Arden and the others were still back in the dining hall, or nearby, and had no idea who was behind this; they wouldn’t be prepared if Verona and Minna came back in, claiming to have been attacked. I couldn’t be sure that Minna would still willingly work with Verona, but Verona had Minna’s sister, and Minna had . . . what? She’d killed the King of Highmountain. Verona would want revenge for that. Maybe not now. Maybe not yet. I needed to pull myself up.

“I hate everything,” I muttered, through gritted teeth, and began slowly, laboriously hauling myself up onto the path. Every time I pulled, my ankle throbbed again. It was no longer the shooting, violent pain of a fresh break, but that was a problem in its own way: the bone was starting to set, and I didn’t know whether the leg was straight. The thought of rebreaking my own ankle before I could walk was not an appealing one.

Sometimes healing faster than anything natural is not as good as it sounds. I kept hauling, and my ankle throbbed with every motion. I couldn’t really get a grip on the wood; in the end, I had to ram my fingers between the planks and pull hard enough that the skin shredded, healed, and shredded again. I was almost there. I could topple back down, or I could pull myself up. I took a breath, tensed my shoulders as tight as they would go, and hauled, boosting myself over the edge and onto the planking.

I collapsed as soon as I was safely on the path, lying flat with my face pressed to the wood and the wind howling around me. My ankle wasn’t throbbing anymore. I didn’t have the necessary materials to rebreak the bone if it hadn’t set right, and so I didn’t look at it; I just pushed myself back to my feet, wobbling as I went, and pressed down on my formerly injured foot, waiting to see what it would do.

It held my weight. Something felt wrong about the way the bones fit together, something in the interaction between joint and muscle, but it didn’t hurt, and I could handle a little limp if it didn’t slow me down. I stopped, closed my eyes, and breathed in as deeply as I could, looking for the blood that I knew was there.

The wind wasn’t helping. I crouched down a bit, getting closer to the wood. Quentin would have tried to bleed somewhere that wouldn’t be noticed or wiped away by the passage of feet. The path was a poor choice, which left . . . I turned to look at the trees around me, moving slowly, sniffing the whole time. Some of the redwoods had branches that overhung the path, making walking more difficult than it might otherwise have been. One of them slapped me in the face as I turned, and I stopped.

I smelled blood.

The branch would have been shoulder height if I’d been standing upright, which put it slightly lower for Quentin, who had been taller than I was for a while. It would have been easy for him to run his fingers over the fronds as they walked. I ran my own fingers through them, stopping when I hit stickiness that couldn’t be attributed to sap. They came away red. I hesitated for barely a second before I brought them to my mouth. Quentin would forgive me for violating his privacy, considering the circumstances.

The world washed in red. My perspective shifted, becoming higher, looking down on things that should have been at eye level. I closed my own eyes, giving myself over to the memory.

Verona is smiling. That’s the worst part of this whole thing. Toby’s frozen in a fairy ring and maybe Tybalt is going to die, and Verona won’t stop smiling. Maybe she can’t. Maybe this is the way she breaks.

“Keep moving,” she says. The Barrow Wight girl has been good since Verona shouted her sister’s name. She’s holding Madden in her arms, his legs pinned and her hand clasped around his muzzle. I don’t think he can turn himself human when she’s holding him that way. I’ve never seen Tybalt transform when Toby was holding onto him. I’ll have to ask later, if we get through this.

I don’t want to die. As we head down the path toward the tower, I run my fingers over the nearest leaves. Toby will come. Toby will find us. Toby will know what to d—

The memory shattered, leaving me gasping for breath. I opened my eyes, turning until my view of the trees matched Quentin’s. Then I started walking, wobbling as I compensated for my ankle, and gathering speed as I figured out my current limits. Finally, I broke into a run, feet pounding on the redwood slats, chasing my ghosts into the night.

Pixies flittered through the trees above me, their wings casting panes of candy-colored light onto the redwood at my feet. I kept running but glanced up, calling, “If you know which way I’m supposed to be going, this would be a great time to help.”

Most people don’t think pixies are very smart, and maybe they’re not, as big, slow creatures measure intelligence. We have the time to stop and think about things, while pixies lead fast, violent lives. Like all fae, they’re technically immortal. Unlike most of us, they have a tendency to wind up splattered across car windshields or be eaten by birds, and so have the high birthrate and bad attitude of creatures with much shorter lives. So maybe they’re not intelligent, but they can be smart, and they can hold a grudge.

Pixies swooped down from above, swirling around me like a wave of living leaves, their thin, translucent wings beating a maddened tattoo that only served to underscore their chiming. Then they surged forward, lighting the path ahead, showing me the way I needed to go. Verona had offended them somehow, maybe just by breaking that window: pixies could be very territorial, and protective of the places that were good to them. Whatever the reason, they were willing to help me now, and so I trusted them, and I ran, praying with every step that I wasn’t too late.