Once Broken Faith (13 page)

“Hi, Toby,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied, keeping my arm around Karen. That didn't feel like enough, and so I continued, “I kept my promise. I stopped the goblin fruit.”

Egil laughed. He sounded so much like Devin that I shivered. “You did, and you knocked down a monarchy to do it. Oh, October, I wish I'd understood what a glorious disaster you were when I was alive. I would have used you to undermine the world, and laughed while it was burning.”

“I can't tell whether that was meant to be a compliment or not,” I said. “Either way, I did what I promised, and now I need a favor.”

Both night-haunts blinked at me. So did several others, some of whom had faces I recognized. Others were foreign to me. Death was rare in Faerie, but not so rare that I was present every time it happened. Thank Maeve for that. If I'd been the sole cause of death in Faerie, High King Sollys would have locked me up and thrown away the key.

“We told you once that we would eat you if you kept summoning us,” said Egil. “What makes you think that's changed?”

“Well, first, I didn't summon you. The body under the table did. Second, I did you a favor. You don't want there to be any chance I could claim you were in my debt, do you?”

Egil narrowed his eyes. “I take back what I said. You're too destructive to be trusted. What do you want from us?”

“I want something that should be pretty easy to give, all things considered. I want you to feed on the dead king, and then let me talk to whoever gets his memories. I need to know if there's anything he saw that I wouldn't know how to interpret when I saw it in his blood.”

There was a momentary silence, broken only by the endless dead-leaf rustle of the night-haunts opening and closing their wings. Finally, almost cautiously, the night-haunt with Connor's face said, “If you leave this room, we won't be here when you come back. We won't wait for you.”

“I know.”

“You'll have to watch us feed.”

“I know that, too.” I glanced to Quentin and Karen. “The others can leave if they need to, but I'm going to stay. I need answers.”

“I want to see,” said Quentin, which seemed brave but ill-thought-out to me. I didn't say anything. He was going to command a continent someday. The night-haunts who patrolled North America would be subjects of his, as much as anyone else was. Maybe it would make a difference if they felt they were allowed to speak to the High King. They certainly didn't feel that way now.

“If Quentin's staying, so am I.” Karen's voice shook. I turned to frown at her.

“Sweetheart, are you sure?”

She looked at me with cool, bleach-blue eyes, and nodded. “I can handle anything he can handle. Maybe more. He doesn't spend his days walking through other peoples' nightmares.”

I wanted to tell her she didn't have to be strong for me, that I'd love her no matter what. I wanted to remind her that Quentin was older than she was, and that she didn't have to compete with him. I did neither of those things. Karen was a changeling. I knew what that meant. She was going to spend her whole life trying to prove she was as good as the purebloods around her, and now that more and more people knew about her oneiromancy, she was going to be fighting to be sure they understood she wasn't there to be controlled. If she wanted to be her own person, she would have to be stronger, better, and capable of standing up to more than anyone around her, or they'd use her blood against her. Every time.

No one in this room would try to do that to her, but that didn't matter. If you wanted to be steel, you had to be steel every day of your life, until it came naturally; until you no longer had to beat yourself bloody trying to achieve it.

“All right,” I said, and turned back to the night-haunts. “You can go ahead and feed.”

“Ah, milady grants permission!” Egil sketched a mocking bow, his wings rattling like plastic bags rolling down a gutter. Then he straightened, smile fading, and turned to speak to the flock.

The language he used wasn't English, or Welsh, or anything else I recognized, but it suited the strange accent that sometimes crept into May's words, the one she only had when she was reaching past the memories she'd received from me and Dare. It was an old language, I knew that much, sweet and fluid and filled with vowel sounds that more modern languages had tucked away as too hard on the ear.

The Luidaeg stepped up next to me. “We had our own language once,” she murmured, in English. “Mother spoke it, when she talked to the children who spent less time around humanity. But it was
easier
to use the words the mortals had. They were lords of language in those
days, spreading across the world and naming everything they saw as quick as a blink. We've never been fond of doing labor that we didn't have to do for ourselves. My tatterdemalion nieces and nephews may be the only native speakers of Faerie left in the world.”

“Can you understand them?” asked Quentin.

“No.” She shook her head, a sweet, bitter smile on her lips. “Words you don't use fall away and are forgotten. I can't even speak it in my dreams.” Looking to Karen, she smiled less ruefully, and added, “Don't try to check that. You won't like what you find in my head.”

“I don't like what I find in your sister's head,” said Karen.

“That's because her sister is a murderous, psychopathic bitch, and you shouldn't spend any time in her brain that can be avoided,” I said. “If evil is contagious, your mother will kill me.”

Karen snorted.

The night-haunts stopped speaking.

I turned to see the flock rise, moving like smoke across the water, and descend on the body of King Antonio Robertson. The more solid night-haunts, the ones whose bodies were firm and whose faces were clear, formed an outer ring around the body. The next tier was slightly less solid. They seemed to waver, but I could pick out individual features, like the curve of an ear or the color of an eye. It would have been possible to describe those night-haunts to an artist and get something a family member might be able to identify. And at the center . . .

At the center were the night-haunts who looked like shadows, so faded that their bodies seemed to have no weight or substance. They were the idea of fae, the concept of solidity, and they couldn't stay as they were forever; the first stiff wind would rip them into nothingness. Then even those parted, easing a ghost toward the body. The night-haunt they'd chosen to eat first seemed to
flicker with every step it took, barely holding itself together. The flock guided it to the skin of King Robinson's neck.

The shadowy night-haunt stopped. The only sound was the rustle of a hundred wings, and my own breath, which seemed impossibly loud in my own ears. The shadowy night-haunt sniffed the air. And then it opened its mouth, revealing teeth that would have been better suited to some deep-sea horror, and sank them into the dead King's neck.

That was the signal for the rest of the flock to move, swarming over the body like so many leaf-winged piranha. I fought the urge to clap my hand over Karen's eyes. I fought the urge to clap my hand over
my
eyes. They ate like beasts, ripping and tearing at the flesh in front of them, moving with such furious hunger that they left nothing behind. When blood was spilled, they were right there, lapping it up, even lifting it out of the fabric of the carpet and stuffing it into their mouths. When they hit bone, they just kept right on eating, chewing down until there was nothing for them to consume but dust and shadow.

The flock pulsed, beating like a heart, and was still. The weaker night-haunts seemed stronger now, thicker and more distinct, even if they still had no coherent faces. The night-haunts like Egil, like the one who wore Connor's face, had been the last to eat; they looked no different. Most of their sustenance was coming from the lives they had already consumed, and would be for years, if I was correct in my understanding of how they were able to survive on scraps as rare as the dead of Faerie.

The flock parted. King Antonio Robinson, now reduced to the height of a Barbie and accented with autumn-leaf wings, walked to the front. He looked . . . lost. There was no other word for the confusion on his face, or the way his eyes darted from side to side, seeking some explanation. Finally, he settled them on me.

“The changeling knight,” he said, a slight sneer in his voice. I couldn't be offended. Maybe if he'd been alive, I would have been, but now . . . I couldn't blame a dead man for his prejudices. It felt somehow unfair. “I . . . am I dead?”

“He'll be disoriented for a time,” said Egil, his tone so much like Devin's. Devin had been a bad man, in so many ways, but he'd always taken care of the ones who needed him. Even if he hurt us, he kept us safe from the rest of the world. “Ask your questions. After you do, we'll be gone.”

“Okay,” I said, and focused on the night-haunt with Antonio's face. “You're a night-haunt now. You'll start remembering that soon, if eating a life is anything like riding the blood. But yes, you died. I'm sorry. You have stopped your dancing.”

“Where are my girls?” He turned to look to either side of himself, searching the air. “Why can't I find my girls?”

My heart sank. Antonio had been Candela. The night-haunts hadn't taken
everything
for a change; not everything had been food to them. “Merry Dancers don't transition that way, I guess. I'm sorry. They broke when you died.”

“Ah.” His eyes closed. He made no effort to conceal his pain. I was almost grateful for that. If he could hurt that badly over a pair of dancing lights, he truly
was
King Antonio, if only until the first rush of blood memories began to fade.

He opened his eyes again, and looked at me. “Why are you speaking to me, changeling knight? I was above you when I lived, and am below you now that I do not. Shouldn't you shun me, refuse to acknowledge the reality of me, leave me for ballad and for bone?”

“There's a phrasing I haven't heard in years,” murmured the Luidaeg.

I ignored her. It was a specialized skill, and one I had
better control of than most. “I rode your blood before the night-haunts came,” I said. “I didn't see what killed you. I thought you might have picked up on something I wouldn't realize was important.” I had been a voyeur in his life. He had
lived
it. “Please, can you tell me what happened?”

Antonio looked at me for a moment before he said, “You'll need to do something for me.”

Of course a pureblood king who couldn't think of me as his equal would have demands, apart from the natural “avenge me.” I should have known. “What do you want?”

“My wife has never been my queen. I wanted her to have safety and the freedom to move through the world as she liked. She never desired the pleasures of a throne. I want you to go to her. I want you to tell her, ‘you are a widow now.' I want you to tell her that our son will rule in my stead. He's young, yet. Too young for such a burden. My seneschal will help him. My seneschal will probably also try to assassinate him.” He smirked, looking more at ease now that he was talking about backstabbing and betrayal. “My boy is quick and clever. He'll learn. He'll adapt. And he'll be a better king than I ever was.”

“Where can I find her?” I asked.

He gave me the address: a street in Anaheim, far from the bustle and decay of Hollywood, close to Disneyland. Arden's parents had had a similar arrangement, with her mother raising her and her brother in the shadows of her father's court, never admitting that they were his heirs, for fear they would be harmed. I had to wonder how many hidden princes and princesses we had scattered around the Westlands, tucked away by parents who'd learned the hard way that accepting a crown was a good way to limit your life expectancy.

When this was over, I was going to have a long talk with High King Sollys about the way the nobility took care of their children.

“I'll find her,” I said. “Now please. What do you remember?”

“I was angry. That woman from the water—a Merrow, married to a Daoine Sidhe. Can you imagine? Their children must be so confused.” He shook his head, disgust written across his features. “She said her eldest son was a Count upon the land, and that one day her youngest would be a Duke beneath the waves. As if that were something to be proud of. When they tear themselves apart trying to be one thing or another, they'll drown the world.”

“I was there when you started yelling at Dianda,” I said, voice carefully neutral. “Where did you go after that?”

“Just down the hall. I wanted to clear my head. I wasn't gone for long—minutes, only—I planned to come back, make my apologies, even if I didn't mean them, and maintain my standing within the conclave. But when I returned to the dining hall, there was no one there. It was like I'd been gone for hours.”

The sound. “I heard something, when I rode your blood.”

“My wife doesn't believe in using magic to preserve food.”

The statement was odd enough that for a moment, I didn't know what to say. “Um, okay,” I offered finally.

Antonio looked at me like I was beneath contempt. “It would be a waste of her skills. She uses a mortal invention instead. Tin foil. Have you heard of it?”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing as I nodded. “Yes. I've encountered the stuff.”

“There's this
sound
when she tears off a sheet . . . I heard it. From this room. And then the shadows jumped.”

Wait. “What?”

“My Merry Dancers were never still, and their light meant the shadows were never solid. They didn't have the opportunity to freeze.” He looked at the shadows
around him, expression growing grim. “The world flickered like a candle. I never knew how much I would miss it until it was over.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But what do you mean, the shadows jumped? Did they actually come for you?” I hadn't noticed anything like that. I had been hoping Antonio could reveal some motive or facet of the situation that his blood hadn't given me, but moving shadows seemed a bit big for me to have missed.