Once Broken Faith (42 page)

There was a brief flare as Cassandra lit a match and held it to the wick of her candle. She had sunk into a cross-legged position on the floor while I couldn't see her, and her hair fell around her face like a curtain as she bent over the flame. It would have been easy to assume that she was staring at the fire. I took a step closer, and
saw that she was staring at the air above it, her eyes unfocused again, darting back and forth as she followed the motion of something only she could see.

“The first sword didn't come from the stone; it came from the sea,” she said, voice hollow and distant. “They called it a lake, later, when they were trying to contain its power, but it was sea-forged and sea-drawn, and its blade knew brine before it knew blood. Sharp it was, and cold it was, and unforgiving, always.”

“What?” I demanded.

A hand touched my shoulder. Walther. I tensed, ready to remind him that touching queens without permission was never a good idea. He caught my eye and shook his head.

“I'm sorry, Highness, but you need to let her work,” he said, voice low—he was trying not to distract her. “She can use the wind to scry, and that's clear, just like Karen can walk in lucid dreams, but when you ask her to See, what you get is images and ideas. We'll interpret them when she's done.” Unspoken:
This is what you asked for. This is what you wanted
.

I forced myself to calm. I nodded. He withdrew his hand.

“She gave the sword away. She gave so many things away. Some for good and some for ill, but oh, she gave them all away.” Cassandra sighed. “So many things, and yet she can't forsake the water. She never set the sleepers sleeping, never plumped their pillows or made their beds. Still, people came to her and asked for clever trinkets, and she had to say them yea. She never had a choice. Not since she chose once, and all her choices were taken away.”

Silence fell. Cassandra tilted her head to the side, like she was looking at something she didn't understand. Finally, she said, “They asked and she said ‘yes.' She has to say ‘yes.' That's why she hates us for asking. She gives and she gives and she gives, and we built a world on the idea that thanking her for what she's already given is against the rules. We built a world on never being
grateful, because we were entitled to everything we got. She's the one who bottled the moon. She's the one who refined the stars. She's the one we have to talk to. But there will be costs. There are always costs. There have to be. It's the only way we ever thank her. With our tears.”

She pitched forward, hands hitting the floor on either side of the candle. The motion was so swift that the wind it generated blew out the flame, casting us into total darkness. A wisp of smoke rose through her hair, paradoxically visible.

“Ow,” muttered Cassandra.

I leaned over and turned the lights back on. They trickled into life, revealing Cassandra unmoving on the floor. Walther was watching her, lips thin, face drawn.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and raised her head, offering him a shaky smile. “You know, I think I'd prefer to have been an oneiromancer. At least Karen gets to go to bed before she beats the crap out of herself.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

She looked at me and nodded. “I do. I don't understand it, but I remember it.”

“Sadly, I understood it,” said Walther. “There's only one woman I can think of who has to help when she's asked, who resents basically everyone, and who always charges for her favors. She doesn't do anything for free. I'm not sure she
can
.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The Luidaeg,” he said.

Silence fell.

The Luidaeg. The sea witch. The terror of the fens. The woman who had, not a week ago, stood in my place, enjoying the hospitality of my home, and told me that while familiarity might breed contempt, I should never make the mistake of thinking she was a tame monster. She would end me if she was given half the chance.

And yet. And yet.

And yet it was because of her that I'd survived to reach adulthood. Without the charms Marianne had purchased from her, the false Queen would have tracked me down long ago and put me into the ground with my parents. Without the Luidaeg supporting October, I would still have been in the bookstore—and when Nolan's elf-shot had worn off on its own, the secondary sleeping charm would have killed him for sure. It was only the fact that I'd woken him early that had allowed us to discover it existed, much less start looking for a cure.

The fact that according to Cassandra, the Luidaeg had also brewed the sleeping potion hidden under the elf-shot, was almost beside the point. I knew she hadn't had a choice. That was one of the things Marianne had been very clear about, back when I'd been a child and she'd been teaching me about the kingdom that would one day be mine.

“The Luidaeg is the oldest of Maeve's daughters, firstborn among Firstborn,” she'd said, Nolan asleep with his head on her knee and me sitting on the floor in front of her, her hands moving through my hair, braiding and binding, tying elf-knots in every lock. I could barely remember my mother's face, but I would always remember Marianne's hands, and the sound of her voice by firelight, when she meant safety, when she meant home.

“She was born so long ago that time has no meaning; it's a name and a number, and it barely matters, because she was happy then, my sweet girl, she was at peace. She and her sisters kept to the fens, to the places where land met sea, and they kept their own counsel, and they made
their own peace. But time will have its due. She buried both her sisters, and she saw her powers bound by her father's other wife, turned to the cause of service. She does what she's asked, and she dies a little more inside with every gift she grants. That's why she asks for voices and for peace and for the sound of a baby's laughter. She charges dear not out of cruelty, but as a plea to be left alone.”

“But why?” I had asked. I'd been so young back then, and those times with Marianne had been my favorites: when she sat behind me and braided my hair, and I could close my eyes and pretend that if I turned around, we'd look alike. That I would change, or she would change—it didn't matter—and she'd be my mother, and it wouldn't be just me and Nolan anymore. “If she can do anything, shouldn't she want to?”

“If she had a choice in the matter, she might want to, but that was the beauty of the binding lain upon her by Oberon's Summer Queen,” had been Marianne's reply. She'd tied off my braid, and finished her story with her hands resting on my shoulders. “Go to her and ask her the price of her tongue, her heart, her bed, and she's bound to tell you. Ask her what it would cost to have your throne back, and she'll draw you up a bill of sale. She is the answer to all our problems, if we're willing to force them upon her. She charges dear, so dear, because she's done so many things she'd never want to do. She'll do so many more before that binding is undone, if ever it is. The Summer Queen wove her workings well.”

The night had been warm and her hands had been soft and I had gone to sleep not long after that, leaving her to carry me to bed, the way she'd carried my brother. Marianne had been a Coblynau, and strong enough to shift the world in its foundations if she needed it to move.

I missed her so much. I probably always would.

My head exploded in a kaleidoscope of pain as I stepped through the latest—and last—of the gates I'd opened since the sun went down. This was it: I'd hit my limits. I staggered, and Madden caught me, shooting a venomous glare at Cassandra and Walther. They had been the first ones through, in part because I was afraid the gate would close before we could all use it, and they were better suited to being stranded in mortal-side San Francisco in the middle of the night than I was. I didn't even carry a wallet anymore, much less a working BART card.

“Ardy?” he asked. “You okay?” It probably shouldn't have been a surprise that he'd insisted on joining us when I'd gone to tell him what we were doing. I was sort of sorry he had. I appreciated the company, but a gate for four was just that much harder than a gate for three.

“Dandy,” I said, and forced myself to stand upright, grimacing as the motion set up a raucous clanging in my head. “Ow.”

“Magic-burn?” asked Walther sympathetically. His hand dipped into his pocket, coming up with a small white bottle, which he offered to me. “Here. This will help.”

“Alchemy?” I asked. I took the bottle without waiting for his answer. Magic-burn is the worst. I would have taken just about anything to make it stop.

“Close,” he said. “Aspirin.”

I laughed. Then I winced as the laughter made my head hurt worse. “Ow,” I said again, and dry-swallowed two aspirin.

Through all of this, Madden was keeping himself busy with glaring at Walther and Cassandra. “I still don't understand why you're here,” he said. “You could have stayed home. Safe. Let your vassals do this for you.”

“Can't,” I said, giving him what I hoped would be a reassuring pat on the arm. “She's going to charge for this. You know she's going to charge for this. They're my subjects, not my vassals—although we're going to be talking
about permanent positions after all this is finished—and I can't ask subjects to pay in my place.”

“I would,” said Madden.

“I know you would,” I said. I smiled at him, as earnestly as the pain in my head would allow. “That's why you don't get to. You're my best friend. I need us to stay as close to equal as we possibly can, under the circumstances, and that means you don't throw yourself on any grenades for me. You're here to make sure I get home after whatever happens. They're here because Walther needs to get the countercharm, and Cassandra's helping him.”

And because I might need a Seer to find the Luidaeg's house. She was rumored to live in this part of the city, where the gentrification ran headlong into the urban decay, forming a strange band that could go from absolutely modern to crumbling and antique in the space of a single block. I liked the older parts of the City, the ones that didn't feel like they were changing so damn
fast
, but this neighborhood had always unnerved me. It didn't feel slow. It felt frozen, like time was standing still in this little slice of dockside real estate.

I looked to Cassandra. She winced. “I'm not Google Maps,” she said.

“You're the closest thing we've got,” I said. “Tell me which way to go.”

“How should I know?”

“Ask the air.”

Cassandra took a deep breath, looking like she was going to argue. Then she sighed, tilted her head back, and looked at the empty, foggy air for a long moment. “That way,” she said, jabbing a finger at the nearest alley. “We need to go that way.”

“And if you're wrong?” asked Madden.

“I guess we find out when the muggers appear,” snapped Cassandra.

Walther put a hand over his mouth to smother his laughter. I rolled my eyes.

“This is going to be a fun night,” I said.

“This has already been a fun night,” said Cassandra.

I couldn't argue with that. We started walking.

The sidewalks here were interesting. I found myself staring at them, trying to puzzle out what about them was so off. The sound of our footsteps was the only thing breaking the silence.

The
only
thing. No one was tripping, or stubbing their foot on cracked pavement, or walking on broken glass. I stopped and gave a crack an experimental kick. It was there—I could feel its edges—but somehow it didn't catch my foot. It was like the sidewalks had been enchanted to make them safer.

They probably had been. The sea witch lived here. I'd known since my days with Marianne that she wasn't evil, just compelled to do things she didn't want to do; I'd known since starting to deal with October that she was protecting my city and my subjects, in her own occasionally brutal way. Things had gotten pretty bad under the custodianship of the woman who'd stolen my father's throne. Without the Luidaeg, things would have gotten even worse.

It was a sobering thought. I started walking again, catching up with the others. Cassandra hesitated from time to time, gazing off into the distance before choosing our next turn. Either we were going to get to the Luidaeg, or we were going to be attacked by mortal muggers who thought we were a bunch of foolish club kids wandering too far from the bright lights of downtown. We all had our human disguises on, and we made a motley bunch: Walther in his professor's clothes, Cassandra the coed, Madden the barista, and me, Queen in the Mists, in my blue jeans and Borderlands Books hoodie, with my hair tucked behind my rounded human ears. If not for the fact that my brother was in trouble, it would have
been almost relaxing. We were just out, walking, enjoying a beautiful night, not running a Kingdom. Not wearing a crown. We were people.