Once Broken Faith (18 page)

“Sandbags?” suggested Quentin.

Patrick flashed him a surprised look. Then he smiled, the expression tinged with worry and sorrow. “Those work, too. I . . .” His gaze went to the arrow protruding from Dianda's shoulder. “Should we be taking this out of her?”

“Not yet,” I said. “She can't get
more
elf-shot than she already is, and if we leave it there, we don't have to worry that she'll start bleeding. Quentin, I have a job for you.”

My squire straightened. “What is it?”

“Go find Arden. Don't be seen.”

He nodded, catching my meaning immediately, and turned to head out of the room at a brisk pace. Sylvester and Patrick both looked at me, the one quizzical, the other alarmed.

“How much time has he spent in this knowe?” asked Sylvester.

“Is it safe for him to go off alone?” asked Patrick.

“Quentin was a courtier at Shadowed Hills before becoming my squire,” I said, picking up Dianda's left wrist and studying her webbed hand. Her fingertips were scraped, ever so slightly. She must have been clinging to the pool's edge when she was shot, and fallen backward into the water as the elf-shot took effect. “He knows how to navigate servants' halls. If there's anyone who can get through this place without attracting any attention to himself, it's Quentin.”

“Can we wake her up?” asked Patrick.

The longing in his voice was so nakedly pure that I froze, allowing several seconds to tick past before I looked up, met his eyes, and said softly, “You know I can't answer that.”

“We have a cure. It's here, in this knowe. No one knows she's been shot. Please, can't we just . . . wake her?”

“No,” said Sylvester. We both turned to him. He looked at Patrick as he said, “Someone knows she's been shot: whoever shot her. There are landlocked kingdoms represented at this conclave, people for whom the threat of the Undersea means nothing, because the Undersea could never touch them. Any one of them could have decided to make their point by targeting someone who couldn't deliver direct retribution—the Law never forbids elf-shot, just cautions that there will always be consequences. Wake her, and whoever shot her can stand before the conclave and announce that the Mists intends to use the cure, no matter what decision is reached.”

“We're talking about my
wife
, dammit,” snapped Patrick. “This isn't one of your idealistic stories about chivalry and heroes. This is my
wife
. Do you think I give a damn about politics?”

“You never have before,” said Sylvester. “Simon despaired of you ever making anything of yourself.”

Patrick's expression turned to ice. “Never say his name to me again,” he said. His voice was, if anything, colder than his eyes. “I was more of a brother to him than you ever attempted to be. Do what you like, but be aware that we're not—will never be—friends.”

“Believe me, I've known that for a very long time,” said Sylvester. He turned to me, and said, “I'm reasonably sure Duke Lorden would be happier if I left. Will you be safe with him? Is there anything I can do for you?”

“If you see Madden, ask him to come here.” Madden worked for the Queen. Assuming he wasn't involved
wasn't just allowed, it was practically required. But as a Cu Sidhe, he had an unbeatable sense of smell, and might be able to tell me who'd been in this room.

Sylvester nodded. “I will.”

“Great. Don't get shot.” I turned my back on my liege, effectively dismissing him, and focused on Patrick. “We can take the arrow out when Quentin gets back with Arden. That gives us enough warm bodies that we should be able to stop the bleeding long enough to call for a medic. I don't want to volunteer to ride Dianda's blood—I don't know what the elf-shot would do to me, and I'm sure there are things she doesn't want me to know—but there may be another way, if we wait a few hours.” Once Karen was asleep, she could enter Dianda's sleeping mind and ask if she'd seen the shooter. It was a clunky solution, one which relied on a teenage oneiromancer being able to reliably repeat what she learned from a comatose mermaid, but it was better than Dianda kicking my teeth in after she'd decided that I knew too much.

“We have to wake her up,” said Patrick. “If we don't . . . Peter isn't ready to be Duke. I
can't
be Duke. I've only ever been ducal consort because there was never any question of my taking over if something happened to her. The Undersea won't submit to rule by an air-breather. They have standards. If Dianda sleeps for a hundred years, the entire political shape of Saltmist changes. And by the standards of the culture that shaped her, Dianda is a pacifist.”

I stared at him. I couldn't help myself. Dianda was a good friend and a better ally, but her solution to almost every problem was blunt-force trauma. “Oh,” I said. “Crap.”

“Yes.” He looked toward the door and then back to me. “Sylvester is gone. You can ask, if you like. I saw the expression on your face when I started ripping into him.”

“Um, yeah. You two were . . . friends?”

“Only if the lobster is a friend to the tuna—which is
to say, we moved in
very
different circles,” said Patrick. “Sylvester was a Duke and a settled man when I met him. Dedicated to his wife, to his people, and to the idea that his brother was a fainting flower who needed to be protected. As I said before, I was more brother to Simon than he could ever have been.”

Something about the way he said that . . . “So you're another of the people who didn't think I needed to know that Simon was married to my mother.”

“I'll be honest: I never cared much for Amandine, who always seemed to view the world as an amusement staged just for her. August was a sweet girl, but after she disappeared, your mother stopped caring about anything, including her husband. The Simon I knew died a long time ago. The man he became . . . I could see the bones of my friend in him. That was all. Nothing more, and sadly, nothing less.”

I wanted to yell at him, to make sure he understood that I was done with people keeping secrets from me. I didn't say anything. His wife was asleep, maybe for a hundred years, and his world was crumbling. The best thing I could do for him—for both of them—was to be quiet, and wait for help to come, and do whatever was required of me. We had a cure. We had a chance. All we had to do now was convince the world to let us use it.

P
ATRICK AND ARDEN WERE having a discussion, which really meant they were shouting at each other. If I'd taken that tone with a Queen, even one who was reasonably fond of me, I would've been waiting for the hammer to drop. Either Patrick didn't care, or he was confident that his status as a citizen of the Undersea would protect him from anything Arden wanted to do. So he yelled, and she yelled back for the sake of making herself heard, and I stood next to the pond, feeling awkward and trying to find something that could help us. Quentin stood nearby, watching me, ready to do whatever I asked of him. I appreciated that.

I would have appreciated a break in the shouting even more, but you can't always get what you want in this world, or any other.

My two big investigative advantages were blood and magic. The untainted blood from Dianda's injury would have been scant enough to hold only a few memories, but since those memories would probably have included the face of the person who'd put the arrow in her shoulder, that would have been enough for me. Unfortunately, the shot had knocked her into the pond, and the water
had carried any traces of blood away. Even if I'd been willing to drink what was effectively someone else's bathwater, I wasn't my mother; the blood would have been too diluted to be of any use. I'd just get a mouthful of dead skin and whatever nasty things were coexisting with those water weeds.

The blood from her wound wasn't safe. It was tainted by the elf-shot. Even if I wanted to invade her privacy that way, I couldn't do it without risking an unplanned nap.

Magic was a better target. Everyone in Faerie has a unique magical signature, and almost everyone can smell a fresh spell or casting. Historically, I've vastly underestimated how sensitive my own nose is to that sort of thing: magic is a function of the blood, I'm Dóchas Sidhe, and I can detect traces most people wouldn't even realize were there. Arden hadn't gated herself into the room, preferring to accompany Quentin on foot, so I didn't need to worry about her blackberry and redwood signature overwriting something more subtle.

I didn't need to worry about any of us overwriting anything. No matter how hard I focused, closing my eyes and pacing around the room, I found no unfamiliar magical traces. There were hints of amber and water lilies around the pool; Dianda's magic, which rose when she transformed. She must have been on two legs when she got into the water, before putting her fins back on to relax.

I was on my third circuit of the room when I stopped, sniffing the air, and opened my eyes. There was a trace of something unfamiliar, something I'd never detected before. It wasn't Dianda or Arden, but they weren't the only people in the room. Turning on my heel, I strode back toward the sleeping area, where the shouting showed no signs of stopping any time soon.

Patrick and Arden didn't seem to notice me there, continuing to argue too fast and too loud for me to get more than a general impression of anger on his part and
frustration on hers. Finally, when it became clear that they weren't going to stop any time soon, I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled. The sound was high, shrill, and amplified by the shape of the balcony, making it impossible to ignore. Patrick and Arden froze before turning to look at me.

“Sir Daye?” said Arden, a warning note in her voice. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to whistle at the Queen.

Whatever. I focused on Patrick. “I need you to gather your magic.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I'm trying to figure out whether Dianda's attacker used magic to get into the room. I've found a signature I don't recognize, but it's too faded for me to pick out the elements. If you could gather your magic so I can eliminate it as belonging to our suspect, that would be a huge help.” I crossed my arms and looked at him expectantly.

“Ah,” said Patrick. He raised a hand, palm turned toward the ceiling, cleared his throat, and recited calmly, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.” The smell of wood and flowers rose around him, briefly unfamiliar, before the part of my mind that was an inexplicable encyclopedia of magical scents kicked in and identified them.

“Cranberry blossoms and . . . some sort of flower, some sort of small white flower with five petals that grows close to the ground,” I said. “It's your magic near the door.”

“Yes, and the white flower is ‘mayflower,'” he said, dropping his hand and letting the magic dispel. “Dianda was having trouble with the stairs. I cast an illusion over both of us, to keep anyone from seeing and judging her based on her difficulty walking—she's a mermaid, she's allowed to have trouble staying on her feet for long—and let it go once we got inside.”

I paused. “Before she was shot, you mean. You released your spell
before
she was shot.”

“I certainly didn't stand around waiting for my wife to be elf-shot before I dropped a simple don't-look-here spell, if that's what you're asking,” he said, a dangerously irritated note creeping into his voice.

“That's not what I mean,” I said, shaking my head. “The person who shot her didn't leave any magical traces in the room. They could have been under a don't-look-here, but it would have broken when they opened the door. They can't have teleported in, or they'd have filled the room with their magic. But if I can still pick up
your
magic, from before she was shot, I should have been able to pick up
theirs
. Dianda saw the person who shot her.”

“Which means all we need to do is wake her up and she can tell us,” said Patrick, turning back to Arden.

“We can't do that,” she said. “You know we can't do that. My own brother is still asleep, because until the High King judges this cure acceptable, we can't use it.”

“She's asleep,” I said. “Honestly, until we know who did this and why, maybe that's for the best.” Patrick turned a stunned, furious look on me. I raised my hands, palms out, as if to ward him off. “Hey, I
like
Dianda, and I don't want her to spend the next hundred years napping, okay? But she's not calm, and she could start hitting people who don't deserve it. This way, we can find out what happened, and why, and wake her up when we have the right people all gift-wrapped for her punching pleasure.”

Arden was staring at me. “That's . . . that's not how the fae judicial system works,” she said.

“Oh, please,” I replied. “We don't
have
a judicial system. We have one law, which we break constantly, and everything else is arbitrary punishments handed down by whoever's higher-ranked in the nobility than the person who did something wrong. If High King Aethlin says someone's punishment is getting punched in the face over and over by an angry mermaid, that's as valid as anything else he might want to hand down. Now. If you
two are done shouting at each other, we need to move her. This room is completely indefensible.”

“I can have her taken to the room where my brother is sleeping, if that would be acceptable to Duke Lorden,” said Arden.

“It would be,” said Patrick. “Will you let me help you find the people who harmed my wife?”

“Maybe,” I said. “If I need you. First, though, I'm going to need that arrow.” I gestured toward the shaft that protruded from Dianda's shoulder. It was fletched in undyed brown feathers that looked like they'd come from some sort of bird of prey. That might help me track down where the shooter had come from, assuming they'd gathered feathers from a native bird. Of course, with my luck, they'd be red-tailed hawk feathers, and I'd learn nothing.

The elf-shot itself, on the other hand . . . thanks to the timing of the lockdown, Walther was in here with us. And I knew he had his kit. We could figure out who'd brewed the tincture, and go from there.

“I thought we needed to leave the arrow where it was,” said Patrick.

“Only until we had help,” I said. “If there's too much blood or anything like that, Arden can open a portal and get her straight to the doctor. You do have a doctor, right, Arden?”

“I haven't needed one yet,” she said uncomfortably.

I resisted the urge to groan. “Okay,” I said. “Sylvester Torquill is here. He has an Ellyllon on his staff—Jin—who's one of the best healers I've ever worked with. If we can get permission from the High King to open the conclave long enough to invite someone else in, either Sir Etienne can gate her over, or Arden can open a portal to Shadowed Hills and bring her through.”

“I'll speak to the High King, and to Duke Torquill, as soon as we have Duchess Lorden appropriately settled,” said Arden.

“Good. Sylvester will want to be asked. He'd do it if I
asked, but it would be a favor to me, not a service to the crown. I think the latter is more important right now.” I glanced at Dianda. She looked so peaceful, sleeping like that. It was really too bad she was going to wake up furious. “Nolan's still in that awful tower room?”

“One way in, one way out,” said Arden. “There's nowhere safer.”

“I'll get Tybalt to bring me up to get the arrow,” I said. “For right now, I'm going to trust the two of you to take care of things.”

Patrick's eyes widened. “Where are you going?”

“Remember I mentioned that there might be a way for me to find out what Dianda had seen without riding her blood? I need to go find out if it's available to me.” Assuming Karen was still awake. Assuming she was willing.

Assuming a lot of things.

“We'll be in the tower room,” said Arden. “As before, all the resources of my knowe are open to you.”

“Which is a good thing, because I think I'm going to need them.” I offered the pair—technically, the trio—a quick, shallow bow. “Open roads.”

“Kind tides,” said Patrick reflexively. Arden didn't say anything, only nodded. I turned quickly, before the shouting could start again, and walked back out to the main room, where Quentin was waiting.

“Come on,” I said, waving for him to follow me. He was well-trained, and had been with me a long time: he followed without question or complaint.

Better yet, he waited until we were in the hallway before he asked, “Where are we going?”

“You have Karen's phone number, right? You two text.”

“Not as much as I text with some other people, but sure,” he said, frowning at my non-answer. “What about it?”

“Text her and ask where in the knowe her room is. I need to ask her for a favor, and I'd rather do it face-to-face.”

Quentin gave me a sidelong look. “Are you going to ask her to take you into Dianda's dreams so you can find out who shot her?”

“Either it's a really obvious plan, or you've been with me for too long,” I said.

“Or both.” Quentin produced his phone from inside his shirt, swiping words across the screen as we walked toward the stairs. “It's a good plan. Why didn't you just, you know, do the blood thing?”

“Dianda will still have elf-shot in her system, and I've never tried riding the blood of someone who's been poisoned so recently,” I said. “So apart from the concern I'd see things she didn't want me to see, since I'd be going in without consent, we might have issues with secondary exposure. I'd rather not spend another week having seizures.” I was still mortal enough for elf-shot to be deadly. My body, however, didn't like the idea of dying, and would fight anything that tried to kill me. When I was elf-shot and unconscious, that meant the balance of my blood started shifting without my conscious command, pushing me farther and farther away from human.

I wasn't ready to give up my humanity yet. It was thin and frayed, and yes, I'd come to terms with the fact that the life I'd chosen meant that eventually, I was probably going to have to lose it, but it was
mine
. It was all I had left of my father, who had died lonely and believing that his only daughter was gone forever. Things were never really pretty when Faerie and the human world intersected. We just liked to pretend they were.

“Karen says she's up, and that her room is near a weird fountain thing,” said Quentin. He squinted at his screen. “There's a fountain inside the knowe?”

“Apparently.” I didn't spend enough time in Muir Woods to know where everything was. There was a way around that. I stopped walking, looking up at the ceiling, and said, “Hi. You remember me, right? I was here when we got the prisoners out of you. I was here when Arden
reopened you. I'm the one who found her. Can you help us find the fountain? I need to talk to my niece.”

Quentin gave me a sidelong look but didn't say anything. He'd seen me pull this sort of trick before.

Knowes are flexible in a way human homes could never be, capable of expanding themselves and rearranging their interiors when the urge strikes. Knowes are
alive
. I'd always suspected that, but I'd confirmed it a few years prior, when the knowe at Tamed Lightning had changed to help me. This was nowhere near as urgent, but a little help would still go a long way.