Once Broken Faith (25 page)

“His name was Dobrinya. I haven't seen him in centuries. I don't even know if he's still alive. I hope he is. He was among the sweetest of my brothers. But you're not mine.”

“Apologies, First,” said Elliot, turning his face resolutely away. He reached up to wipe his eyes, trying to make the motion seem unobtrusive. He failed, but it was a valiant attempt. “I just never expected to stand so close to you. To any one of you.”

“I know,” she said. “You did good.”

Elliot visibly swelled with pride, finally looking at me. “You need to stop doing this sort of thing,” he said.

I shook off my surprise. It had been so long since I'd seen someone dealing with their first Firstborn encounter that I'd almost forgotten what it looked like. “Why should I stop? You do such a good job of fixing it.” I glanced down at myself. The blood was gone. So were the holes in my clothing. Even my bodice had been relaced, although the laces weren't pulled tight; that would have knocked the air out of me, and that's never good when you're surrounded by a giant wave of magical water. I looked up again. “The High King told me to change my clothes. You think he'll be cool with me having them magically steam-cleaned instead?”

“No,” said Arden immediately. “You need to wear something they haven't seen before. It's the only way you'll be taken seriously.”

“Oberon save me from the purebloods and their rules,” I muttered. “All right: I'm going to need an escort back to the room I'm supposed to be sleeping in, since all my clothes are there.”

“Actually, no—you won't,” said the Luidaeg. She turned and took the brown case from Karen, who had observed everything in silence, eyes wide and face drawn. She looked like she couldn't decide whether she wanted to be terrified or amazed. That was a combination I was very well-acquainted with.

Setting the case on the table, the Luidaeg opened it and began rooting through a welter of scraps. Finally, she pulled out a piece of coppery spider-silk. The edges were ragged, but the lightning jag remains of the embroidery that must have covered the entire piece of fabric were still visible. She walked over and held it out to me.

“Here,” she said. “Now strip.”

“Uh.” I glanced at Quentin. As I had expected, his cheeks were so red that he could have replaced Rudolph as the lead reindeer for Santa's sleigh. “I'm going to go with ‘no.'”

The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “When you people
learned all this modesty shit from the humans, I may never figure out. There's a screen in the bathroom. Go get it, stand behind it, and strip.”

“Why am I stripping?” I asked. Quentin was blushing harder all the time. I was starting to wonder if the Luidaeg missed the sight of blood all over everything, and was trying to make my squire explode.

“Because you need to change your clothes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Unless you want to argue with the sea witch?”

I groaned, throwing my hands up in the air. “Sure,
now
you get all dire and terrifying, because you want something. Why can't you be dire and terrifying when people are stabbing me? That's when I need you to be dire and terrifying.”

“The bathroom's over there,” she said, pointing.

I stopped complaining and went.

The bathroom, as she called it, was bigger than my living room, and contained a recessed tub that would have given me nightmares if it had been full. If the Luidaeg hadn't been attending the conclave, this would probably have been the room assigned to Patrick and Dianda; she could have gone swimming in that tub. The promised screen was propped against the wall next to a large rack of soaps, bath oils, and baskets full of bath salts. I grabbed it, hoisted it up onto my shoulder, and returned to the main room, where the others were waiting.

“That is the biggest bathtub I've ever seen,” I said, putting the screen down.

“So glad to know that your pedestrian concerns continue to take priority,” said the Luidaeg. “Now strip.”

Arguing with her wasn't going to get me anywhere. I unfolded the screen, stepped behind it, and began removing my clothes, trying to pretend I wasn't sharing the room with my regent, my squire, a sea witch from the dawn of time, and an easily amused Duchess with a
penchant for rewriting the luck of others. Tybalt, Elliot, and Karen were almost irrelevant; none of them made me that nervous, at least where nudity was concerned. Finally, I stepped out of my trousers, and called, “Done!”

“Great. Hold the cloth in front of you, hold your breath, and close your eyes.”

I did as I was told. I'd come this far. What was a little more ridiculousness?

The Luidaeg said something else, more softly this time. That was the only warning I received before a wall of hot, soapy water cascaded over me, leaving me gasping. Then I realized I could feel corset stays pressing against my sides. I looked down. The copper scrap had become a strapless, corseted gown. The skirt was loose enough for me to run in, cut mid-calf in the front and extending to the floor in the back. The whole thing was covered in that delicate forked lightning embroidery, giving the impression that I'd just walked out of the heart of a storm. There were even shoes, flats, made of leather that was the same beaten-gold color as the lightning.

“Well?” said the Luidaeg. “Come out.”

I came out. “How?” I asked, gesturing to the dress.

“Bannick magic repairs what it cleans,” she said. “Normally, that means patching and mending, but if you set up the right conditions—like, say, a piece of spider-silk cut from the gown of a dignitary at a conclave similar to this one, several centuries ago—you can sometimes convince the magic it should recreate the clothing out of whole cloth. You can keep the dress, by the way, assuming you don't manage to bleed all over it. I have no use for that sort of thing.”

“And the shoes?”

“No outfit is complete without shoes, earrings, and, if necessary, gloves.”

I looked down. The gloves were tucked into the top of my bodice. I pulled them out and pulled them on,
managing not to grimace at the feeling of the silk wrapping tight around my fingers. “Happy now, Fairy Godmother?”

“Ecstatic,” she said, somehow drawing the word out until it was four syllables long and packed with bitterness. “I won't tell you to be home before midnight. Just try not to get stabbed again.”

“I'd prefer she try not to get stabbed in the first place,” muttered Tybalt darkly.

The Luidaeg turned on him. “You, get out,” she said—not unkindly, which was a nice change. “You need to get to the conclave without the rest of us if you don't want to damage that independence you cats prize so much. They can't start without Arden, but they'll start without you. Hurry along.”

Tybalt cast me one last, pained look. Then he was gone, stepping back into the shadows and pulling them around him like a curtain, becoming nothing but the memory of a man.

The Luidaeg wasn't done. She turned to Arden, and said, “Now's your turn to play taxi. Get us to the conclave.”

Arden blinked, raising her eyebrows. “I'm the Queen here.”

“And I am clearly coming around too often and putting up with too much of your monarchist bullshit, because you seem to have forgotten the essential fact that I. Will. Fuck. You. Up.” The Luidaeg took a step toward Arden. Her eyes were suddenly black, and while her features hadn't shifted, there was an element of menace to them that hadn't been there a second ago. She didn't need to change her form to be as brutal and mercurial as the sea. “Familiarity may breed contempt,
Your Highness
, but I recommend you find a way to shake off that tendency, because you have no power over me, no authority to command my actions, and no reason to expect my good will. Now, are you going to be a smart girl and
open a door for us, or am I going to remind you why even the rulers of the Divided Courts listen when the Firstborn decide to speak?”

Arden had gone white. She didn't say anything, simply sketched an archway in the air with her hand. It opened, smelling of blackberry flowers, to reveal the stage in the arcade. Then she curtsied to the Luidaeg. Curtsied deeply, until her forehead was almost pressed against her knee, revealing the swan's-wing slope of her back, graceful and vulnerable in her white gown. The Luidaeg stepped forward, resting her fingertips against Arden's spine. Arden shivered.

“Don't mistake me for a friend because I sometimes choose to be friendly,” said the Luidaeg. “Don't pretend you have some sort of control over what I do. I'm Firstborn. That means something. Even here, even now, in this washed-out mockery of Faerie, that means something. If you forget again, I'll have to leave you with something to remember me by. So please, Arden. Because I loved your father, in my own way, in my own time, don't make me remind you.”

She stepped through the portal, onto the stage, leaving the rest of us to stare, silently, after her. For a long moment, no one could find anything to say. Then Karen, of all people, cleared her throat.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Li Qin snorted. “Don't we all,” she said, and followed the Luidaeg's trail.

O
UR GROUP WAS THE only one in the gallery when we arrived. Arden was the last one through. A door opened at the back of the stage as the portal closed behind her. Maida and Aethlin entered, followed by their guards. Maida cheated a glance at Quentin as she walked to her throne. He offered her a thin, heavily shuttered smile that made my heart hurt. What was the value of a throne if this was what it meant for the relationship between parent and child?

Tybalt settled in the third row from the stage. Either they hadn't offered him a throne, or he'd declined it; both options made sense. He was watching Maida intently, and I wondered whether his thoughts and mine had been following similar paths. Probably not. Children were a concern for later, when he was no longer King and I was no longer getting stabbed on a regular basis. Which probably meant children were a concern for never, no matter how much I might quietly wish otherwise.

Siwan entered from the right side of the stage, moving to settle on her throne. Maida and Aethlin took their seats, looking to Arden. In turn, she looked to the Luidaeg. The Luidaeg nodded.

Arden turned her attention to the front of the gallery. “Open the doors,” she commanded.

Two previously unseen courtiers pulled the doors open, and the gathered nobles, household staffers, and assorted onlookers poured through, looking suspiciously at one another as they settled. There were no introductions or other niceties today. The murder of King Antonio had successfully turned the conclave into a prison, and had removed any convivial atmosphere that might have otherwise arisen.

Patrick walked in alone, head held high, a loop of pearls tied around his upper arm like a lady's favor. He nodded and met my eyes as he sat. I nodded back. He wasn't going to be happy about the fact that Dianda was set to stay asleep for a day, much less for the duration of the conclave. He would also, probably, understand. He'd been doing this long enough to know how things worked. That didn't make the thought of telling him any easier.

The doors closed. The High King and High Queen rose, suddenly regal, suddenly untouchable. “Before we resume the business of this conclave, a new matter has been brought to our attention,” said Aethlin. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The spells were active again, the air crackling with the faint scent of hot oil and ramps. “Will Duke Patrick Lorden of Saltmist please rise and approach?”

Patrick stood. A murmur spread through the crowd as he walked to the stairs and mounted them, slowly moving to the spot on the stage reserved for presenters.

“Please tell this conclave what happened.”

“After yesterday's session, while I was retrieving refreshments for my wife, an intruder entered our quarters uninvited and struck her down,” said Patrick. His voice never broke; his gaze never wavered from Duke Michel. “She was elf-shot by a coward who knew the Undersea would see this as an act of war, and did not fletch the arrow in the colors of their demesne.”

“How can you be sure she didn't elf-shoot herself, to influence this conclave's decision?” The question came from Maida, which may have been the only reason it wasn't immediately followed by Patrick launching himself at the person who asked it. He'd been living in the Undersea for a
long
time. As it was, I saw the tension in his shoulders, and the way his fingers struggled not to ball into fists. He wanted to hurt her for even asking. I couldn't blame him, even as I silently thanked him for his patience.

“Elf-shot is not a weapon of the Undersea, Your Highness,” he said. His voice was calm and clear. “We're here because we wish to know what is decided, and because our son is a Count sworn to service of this crown, not because the ban will impact our daily lives. Elf-shot is a coward's weapon. Even were my wife a liar and a manipulator of men, she would never use elf-shot on herself. She wouldn't know where to begin.”

Maida nodded before looking to me. That was my cue, then. I stood, offering quick bows to the thrones and to Patrick, who wasn't technically my superior, but who sure needed the support, before walking up the steps to stand beside him.

“The arrow entered Duchess Lorden's shoulder from the front, passing through several layers of muscle before coming to a stop,” I said. “Even if she'd wanted to stab herself, the shaft of the arrow was too thin. It would have broken. It needed to be fired from a bow, and as there was no bow found with the Duchess' body, she didn't do that.”

“Sir Daye,” said Maida. “Do you know who shot the Duchess?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

“Karen Brown, the oneiromancer, who has been accepted by this conclave and vouched for by the sea witch, led me into Duchess Lorden's dreams. Duchess Lorden
saw the man who shot her.” I watched the crowd as I spoke. Duke Michel had gone very still, and was staring straight ahead, trying to look like none of this was bothering him. Poor thing. He'd been expecting to get away with it.

“Who was that man?” asked Maida.

“Duke Michel of Starfall.”

“I object to this . . . this mockery!” shouted Duke Michel, jumping to his feet. Apparently, he was going on the offensive. Good. That would make him easier to knock down. “You'd take the word of a changeling who claims to have walked in a mermaid's dreams? What next—we listen to the testimony of pixies?”

“I would, if the pixies had something important to say,” said Maida. “There is an easy solution to the question of whether Sir Daye is telling lies.”

“I am not a liar,” I said. “I would be happy to accept my punishment, if I were.”

“Excellent,” said Aethlin, sitting forward while Maida sat back, her part in this little shadow show complete. “The fastest, most honorable way for us to resolve this is, as always, through the blood. Duke Michel, will you approach the stage?”

Duke Michel went white. He'd always been a pale man, but now he looked like a wax dummy, bloodless and trapped. “I would prefer not to bleed for the amusement of the masses,” he said stiffly.

“And I would prefer not to have a dignitary from the Undersea lying elf-shot in a private room, but if there's one thing I've learned since assuming my throne, it's that none of us is guaranteed our heart's desire,” said Aethlin. There was a warning beneath his words, mild as they were: this was the High King. Refusing him could have negative consequences, not only for the unfortunate Duke Michel, but for the entire Kingdom of Starfall.

Duke Michel recognized that, or at least recognized that he didn't have a way out of this situation. He
approached the stage, keeping his eyes on High King Aethlin the whole time. He either didn't see or didn't acknowledge Patrick's narrow-eyed glare, or the way people leaned away from him as he passed, making sure he didn't taint them by association.

When he reached the stage, he walked up the three shallow steps and knelt in front of the High King's throne. “This is an insult,” he said, in a tone that was probably meant to sound humble, but came off as snide, like he was too good to be accused by a changeling and a man who'd given up his political aspirations to go and swim with the fishes.

“Perhaps, but since you've already offered insult to Duke Torquill, it could be said that we're merely evening the scales,” said Aethlin. He removed the ring from his left index finger and pressed his thumb against the stone, which clicked and swung open, revealing a compartment on the other side. He shook the ring above his palm. A silver-coated rose thorn fell out. Grasping the thorn between thumb and forefinger, he looked at Duke Michel. “Your hand, Duke.”

“This is an insult and a sham.”

“Again, perhaps,” said Aethlin. “Your
hand
.”

Duke Michel grudgingly held out his hand, managing not to wince when Aethlin drove the thorn into the meaty pad of his pointer finger. They remained like that for a moment, the king pressing the thorn into the flesh of the duke. Then Aethlin sat back, pulling the thorn free, and moved it deftly to his mouth, allowing the Duke's blood to trickle onto his tongue.

It was theater. It was smoke and mirrors and unnecessary drama, and it was very important, because the blood wasn't a truth detector: the blood was the truth, and the truth was a big, messy thing. If Duke Michel had been thinking about what he'd had for breakfast that morning, the High King would have gotten the memory of eggs and bacon and brambleberry jam. If Duke
Michel had been thinking about his laundry, the High King would have learned far too much about how bright he wanted his whites. No: the Duke's thoughts had to be fixed on what he'd done. Public humiliation was the surest way to bring those memories to the surface.

High King Aethlin's eyes went unfocused for a moment before he looked at Duke Michel, sorrow etched into his features. “Why?” he asked. “I can see you drawing the bow, I can see the arrow fly, but what I can't see is
why
.”

“Because the Undersea has no reason to be here; they should have no say in this matter,” said Duke Michel. All signs of humility, false or otherwise, were gone. He'd been caught, and there was no more reason for him to pretend. “You're acting like this is a
conversation
, and not some sort of circus intended to blind the rest of us to the fact that you would withhold a shield against our greatest weapon. Are we truly to believe that Silences would refrain from using the tincture that returned their entire royal family to the throne? That the Mists would be willing to leave a tool shaped by one of their own unused? No. This is not a conversation. This is you pretending there's any chance the rest of us will have access to something that should belong to all or none.”

“You shot my wife to make a point?” Patrick sounded quietly puzzled. I'd known him long enough to know how dangerous that tone was. Fleetingly, I wondered whether he was really the calm one, or whether it was just a matter of Dianda losing her temper faster than her husband did.

“I shot your wife because I knew they would wake her up,” said Duke Michel.

High King Aethlin stood. All the little whispers and rustles that had spread through the gallery stopped. When the High King rose, it was best to be beneath notice.

“This conclave will continue,” he said, in a soft voice.
“Should we vote to release the cure, Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist will be the first to awaken. Should we decide the needs of Faerie are better served by keeping the cure under lock and key, she will sleep for a hundred years, in the knowe where she was felled, that we might remember what our failure has meant for an innocent woman and her family. The hospitality of this kingdom will be extended to her husband and youngest son for that entire time, by order of the High Crown—should Queen Windermere step down before century's end, her successor will be bound to grant the Lordens all the gifts and graces of an honored guest. You have done this, Duke. You have spent the coin of another kingdom as if you had the right, and for that, you must be punished.”

Duke Michel's eyes widened. There were no rules against the use of elf-shot, which had been invented, after all, as a means of cutting each other down without killing. There were, however, a lot of rules about things like “abusing the hospitality of another kingdom.” With one simple sentence, Aethlin had changed the game.

“Your Highness, I never—” the Duke began. Aethlin silenced him with a glare.

“Whatever your intent, this is what you have done,” he said. “I apologize to Duke Torquill that he will be unable to duel you for a time, but you are needed elsewhere. You will be elf-shot. You will be held here until you wake, whenever that may be. And then, the Duchess Lorden will be asked what penalty the Undersea would lay against one who raised a hand against one of their diplomats. If she wakes soon, that penalty may be slight. If she sleeps a hundred years . . . you had best hope she understands the meaning of ‘mercy.'”

“She doesn't,” said Patrick.

Duke Michel's head dropped until his chin was almost level with his chest. It was done; he was beaten. All he could do now was stand silently as the High King's guards came and led him away.

High King Aethlin remained on his feet. He looked out on the arcade, and asked, “Well? Is there any further business to be conducted before we resume discussion of the matter that has brought us here?”

“Yes, Highness,” I said. He shot me a startled glance. I shrugged, trying to look casual, like I interrupted this sort of thing every day. Which . . . wasn't too far off, in general, even if the specifics were somewhat unique. “I've been granted permission to investigate the matter of Duke Antonio's murder, remember? I need to be working right now, not sitting here and listening to a conversation that I can't join or influence. Anything I need to know, someone can bring me up to speed on later.”

“I see,” said Aethlin. “Was there anything else you needed?”