When Sorrows Come

by Seanan McGuire

  “Yes, ma’am.” Fighting wasn’t going to do me any good. Stacy has been one of my best friends since childhood—she held the title unchallenged until May came along and had taken her sudden rival with the impeccable good grace I loved about her. She knew where all my buttons were, and how best to push them, since she’d been there when many of them were being installed. Fighting with her was never as easy, or as successful, as I wanted it to be.

  She had taken her demotion from the assumed position of maid of honor to head bridesmaid with incredibly good grace—one of the only decisions I’d made myself, which may have helped. She’d always expected to stand beside me for whatever nightmare of a ceremony I would put together when left to my own devices, and to smile through a puce bridesmaid’s dress while we served pizza at the reception. This was a demotion and a reprieve at the same time.

  She bustled around me, pulling the pieces of the corset into place before starting to draw the laces tight. I smiled down at her, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly fond. “Hey,” I said.

  “What?” Stacy didn’t lift her head, focused on getting the knots to lay just right so they wouldn’t show under whatever confection of a dress she was planning to slide me into. Stacy’s illusions have always been stronger than mine, despite being a thin-blooded changeling; whatever she inherited from her Barrow Wight ancestors doesn’t fight against flower magic the same way my mother’s blood does.

  Despite that, she’s never been a fan of enchanting or creating dresses out of raw materials. It’s considered a basic hearth trick that every changeling should master, and she can do it, but she prefers real things that can’t be accidentally destroyed by the wrong counterspell. One incident at Julie’s twelfth birthday party, and she’d rather haul what looked like half of Nordstrom to Canada than risk dressing me in feathers and cobwebs.

  It’s endearing, if weird. “I love you a lot,” I said.

  She did glance up at that, startled, before she turned her attention back to my laces. “Yeah, well, let’s see if you still love me when I finish your makeup,” she said. “You’re going to get a mascara wand to the eye.”

  I did. Twice. I also got a cloud of assorted cosmetic powders in my nose, causing me to sneeze while she was zipping me into my dress, muttering under her breath about how any purebloods who didn’t like the modernity of zippers in the royal knowe could bite her, and then she was behind me, yanking my hair into compliance with brisk, rough efficiency that made me yelp several times.

  I was sure at least one of them was audible in the chamber outside, but Tybalt did not appear to save me. Traitor.

  When Stacy was finally done, she stepped back, her own hair in sweaty disarray, and planted her hands on her hips, looking me frankly up and down. “You’ll do,” she said. “Now get out.”

  “Do I get to look in a mirror?”

  “Eyes are reflective. Go let Tybalt look at you.” She pointed to the door. “If you make the High King wait, I think that’s technically treason, and if I’m the reason you’re late, I’m as treasonous as you are. People have died for less. Go. Get out.”

  I got out. Stumbling through the door back into the main chamber with no real sense of what I was wearing, save that it was one-shouldered and sleeveless and long enough to cover my feet, and the distinct sense that Stacy would send me to the High King naked if I forced her hand.

  Tybalt was sitting on the loveseat across from the squire’s room, a book in his hands, idly turning pages without seeming to really look at their contents. Stacy slammed the door behind me. Tybalt looked up.

  He had been busy while I was getting changed, trading his traveling clothes for a pair of black leather pants that made his ass look amazing and were going to look even more amazing on my floor later in the morning, when I peeled them off of him. His shirt was probably better called a blouse. It started a deep shade of orchid purple at the shoulders, trending paler as it descended, until it turned white just above his waist. It was tucked in and belted, so I couldn’t see what color the bottom was. Clear, maybe. Clear would have been perfectly fine by me.

  I swallowed. It didn’t help. “Um,” I managed. “Wow.”

  “I was about to say similar,” he said, setting his book aside and rising. “You look . . .”

  “Stacy dressed me,” I said needlessly. “I don’t even know what I’m wearing.”

  He walked over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders, and turned me to face the hot tub. The wall beyond it was mirrored, because, of course, it was. The local nobles apparently got up to some kinky shit when they were visiting the High King.

  My impressions of the way the dress fit were correct; it was fastened over one shoulder with an asymmetric neckline, hugging the line of my body until it reached my hips, where it broadened out into a flowing skirt. The fabric was uniformly black to my hips, where it began to show flashes of purple, red, and pale pink. Those colors became more dominant as the skirt continued to descend, until my entire lower body was the color of a bruised orchid. My hair was braided along the sides, fastened with pins shaped like orchid blossoms, and gathered into a twist at the back of my head. Stacy had managed to give it body somehow, making it look less like someone had used a ruler to style it.

  I had no jewelry, and in this dress, I didn’t need it. My only adornment was the knife belted at my hip. Over the dress at Stacy’s insistence, to make it easier to take away if it turned out that even heroes weren’t allowed to go armed into the company of the High King.

  “You look amazing,” said Tybalt, voice low, and kissed my cheek. “Now, we should be going. Nessa came to the door a few minutes ago, and I assured her that you were almost ready. If this is how Stacy thinks you should be dressed at all times, do you think we could employ her to live in the guest room and clothe you nightly?”

  “Something’s not quite right about that woman,” I muttered, before returning to the matter at hand and raising my voice back to normal levels. “We both know that if we weren’t in the high knowe of the Westlands, someone would put a stab wound in this thing before we had a chance to make it to dinner,” I said, letting him guide me toward the door. “Is everyone coming to dinner?”

  “I think they were concerned about causing offense to someone important by inviting only members of our party, so yes, we are all to dine with the High King and High Queen of your Divided Courts tonight. All save Stacy and Kerry, who have, I believe, pled preoccupation with addressing the disaster of your life as a reason they are unable to attend.”

  “Cheaters,” I murmured.

  “Quite.” He opened the door, revealing the hall, where Nessa was waiting with the rest of our group. True to Stacy’s prediction, Quentin was standing with Dean, the two boys holding hands as if they had nothing else left to cling to in the world. Chelsea and Raj stood nearby, Chelsea behind the pair, Raj in front, clearly protecting their friends. Interesting.

  Everyone had changed for dinner. Everyone, that is, except for the Luidaeg, who was still wearing her customary overalls, hair taped into ponytails. I raised an eyebrow at her. She smirked.

  “You clean up well enough,” she said. “Shall we?”

  “Yeah, let’s go,” I agreed, and she started down the hall, leaving the rest of us—Nessa included—to follow after her. Nessa looked anxious about the whole thing, clearly believing she was meant to be in the lead, and to be fair, she probably was. But the Luidaeg just as clearly knew where we were going. “Have you been here before?” I asked, pitching my voice low.

  She laughed, bright and musical and delighted. “I attended the convocation where they decided to put the thing in Maples,” she said. “Who do you think convinced the Roane it would be safe for them to leave Beacon’s Home long enough to come and tell the land folk what to do with themselves? There were four of them in the kingdom, a family, living together at the edge of the sea, terrified of things they couldn’t quite predict or see co
ming. But they were kind, and they wanted to help. Archibald and Sarah were close descendants of mine—I knew their parents, and their grandparents had been my own children, although they had different fathers, thankfully. That’s part of why it’s so important your Firstborn stay a little bit to the side of Faerie. You would all be horrified to learn how closely your forebears were related to one another.”

  “Fae genetics are weird,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. She was right.

  Everyone knows Faerie began with the Three, that Oberon, Maeve, and Titania had created us all, one way or another, in some combination or other with one another. No one, seemingly not even the Firstborn, knows where they came from in the first place, but Maeve and Titania have always been referred to as sisters, making our family tree, morphologically diverse as it is, more like a family branch.

  Maybe a family arrow. Something long and straight and capable of flying very far because there was nothing to slow it down.

  Faerie’s history is riddled with secret human ancestors, mortal outcrosses who have been politely concealed from society by the use of hope chests to turn the resulting children into purebloods and allow them to carry on the family line. Without the hope chests, we would never have been able to build the numbers to create a society, much less to thrive, and most of us cope by never thinking about it. Siblings don’t marry each other, but cousins do, because cousins have to. If you want to continue your descendant line, you don’t have a choice.

  If we went far enough back along the branch, we’d probably find a point where Tybalt and I were related, since at least one of the Cait Sidhe Firstborn was descended from Oberon. For obvious reasons, made stronger by my own human upbringing, I had no interest in doing the research necessary to prove it.

  The Luidaeg reached over and patted my hand, clearly reading the distress in my expression. “Sorry,” she said, and while her tone was sarcastic, I knew her meaning was sincere. That’s the only good thing about talking to someone who’s been geased to be literally incapable of telling a lie. “I know you’re still human enough not to like to talk about these things. But Archibald and Sarah were good people, and when I asked them to speak for Maples, they agreed. Packed up their children and traveled to the convocation to give their testimony.”

  I blinked at her. “Why did you get involved?”

  “The Gwragedd Annwn was right when she said the Roane predicted war if we seated the High Kingdom in Ash and Oak,” said the Luidaeg. “I had already seen it in my own twists of the tide, and I knew that when the iron rose from the harbor and had the land for its pleasures, the Kingdom as we knew it would fall. If that had been allowed to happen after seating the High Kingdom there, all the lesser Kingdoms would have believed they had the right to challenge for the throne. Not just in the Westlands—Europa would have joined the fray, and possibly the North Kingdom and Aztalan. Those last two weren’t certain. The others were. The Shallcross family held the throne of Ash and Oak.”

  “I remember King Shallcross,” said Tybalt thoughtfully. “Daoine Sidhe. Unpleasant fellow. Did he ever marry?”

  “Yes, Queen Vesper was by his side for the last thirty years of his rule,” said Quentin. “She was also Daoine Sidhe, of no known family line.”

  “He deserved her,” said the Luidaeg. “I never met the woman, but from what I understand, his bride was as callous and self-absorbed as he was.”

  “They wed after I left, then,” said Tybalt.

  “You got out a good fifty years before the calamity.” The Luidaeg looked like she was on the verge of saying more, but that was when Nessa finally tired of letting us lead and shoved her way between us, turning around so that she was walking backward like a tour guide as she smiled beatifically, if tensely, at the Luidaeg.

  “It’s a great honor that you’re all to be allowed to dine with the royal family tonight,” she said, in a bright, cheery, somewhat strained voice. “As some of you have clearly mortal heritage, it’s possible you don’t know the etiquette appropriate to the occasion. Please do not speak to the High King or Queen unless spoken to directly; you may address servants, but should refrain from doing so whenever possible, to make things simpler.”

  “Should we also refrain from looking directly at anyone who might outrank us?” asked the Luidaeg, tone dry.

  Her failure to tell Nessa her name was starting to feel a little mean. Still, something about Nessa was bothering me, and Quentin said she wasn’t acting like herself, and if this was keeping the Luidaeg happy, I wasn’t going to say anything. When dealing with someone as old as the Luidaeg, it’s generally a good idea to let them have their fun. Oberon was causing a lot less trouble. He was still walking quietly along with the group, looking at everything with the same calm serenity. He wasn’t even what I would have called particularly wide-eyed; he wasn’t gawking, just looking at his surroundings. All this had been built since his disappearance.

  I wondered, not entirely idly, whether he approved of the things we’d done while he was gone. If he didn’t, there was probably going to be some kind of a reckoning soon, and the thought of trying to protect the people I cared about from someone whose power was exponentially greater than the Luidaeg’s was horrific enough to not be worth dwelling on.

  And anyway, we had reached a door that actually did us the courtesy of looking like a door, albeit a massive, ornate one of carved maple inlaid with amethyst panels. These were smooth, polished pieces, almost as clear as colored glass, allowing us to see movement in the room beyond.

  “Welcome to the Grand Court of Maples,” said Nessa, and spread her hands wide. The doors swung open, revealing a room massive enough to make the entrance hall seem small.

  The floor was polished amethyst, balanced by the raw amethyst ceiling. Crystals jutted down like stalactites, glowing from within with a soft light that somehow managed to not be purple, defying all logic and sense in the process. There were no corners, the room having been constructed in the round, and tall tables sketched out the circumference of the space. They weren’t pressed to the wall, instead being set far enough out to both allow a generous amount of space for seating and to let the servers pass freely behind the diners. Every seat was occupied, save for a table that had clearly been left open for our use.

  We could have put every member of Arden’s Court and everyone who regularly attended the Court at Shadowed Hills at those tables and not come close to filling them entirely. The enormity of this venue was beginning to press down on me, becoming almost overwhelming.

  Tybalt’s hand settled on my shoulder in what would probably look like a proprietary gesture to anyone who didn’t know me well enough to see how close my flight or fight response was to kicking in. Neither bolting from the room nor swaggering up to the High King and saying something inappropriate was going to serve me well right now, and I was grateful for Tybalt’s intervention, even as I lightly resented the need for it.

  Emotions can be contradictory, is what I’m saying.

  More tables split the center of the room, preventing it from looking quite so much like a cruise ship buffet. These were long, straight tables that looked like they’d been hewed from ancient trees, each of them as big around as one of the great coastal redwoods, polished and sanded and stained but not painted in any way. It should have been rustic. It should have been charming. It wasn’t. It was like something out of Beowulf, ancient and imposing, and I didn’t belong here.

  Nessa walked with smooth assurance down the center of the room, following a path between the tables, which were spaced wide enough to let us all follow her without bumping into any of the army of servers who moved between them with trays and baskets in their hands. The diners stopped their dining as we passed, turning to watch us with eager, calculating eyes. They were taking our measure with every step, and many of them were finding us wanting.

  Too many teenagers, for one thing; it’s not common for people to visit royal
courts with an entire high school in attendance. I could see how intently they were studying the boys: Quentin, who seemed to be trying to disappear into Dean, Dean, who was defending his boyfriend as well as he could with the relatively slight outline of his body, and Raj, who was meeting their measuring stares with an imperious gaze of his own, daring them to say a single word about a Prince of Cats walking among them. They were looking for something, I realized. They were looking for their Crown Prince.

  Of course. Even if no one here knew that Quentin Sollys was living in blind fosterage in the Mists, the people who commonly attended this Court had to know what age he’d be, and they’d have a decent guess at what he’d look like now. Every visitor important enough to get a dinner invitation had to be subject to a certain degree of scrutiny.

  Nessa stopped when she reached the front of the room. “I am honored to present Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words, sworn to Shadowed Hills and carrying the banner in the Mists, and her consort to be, King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats,” she said, in a clear, carrying voice. Then she faltered, finally appearing to realize that she’d never bothered to ask for anyone else’s names, and said, “Along with their company, who have traveled here from the Mists to receive the grace and glory of your presence, and the joy of dining in your hall.”

  High Queen Maida was pressing a napkin to her lips like she thought she could contain her laughter through sheer force of refusing to let it out. High King Aethlin, on the other hand, was emulating his subjects in the way he scanned our party, making me suddenly, fiercely glad that Quentin had been foolhardy enough to trade his face for anonymity. If anyone had even suspected he might be with me, the way the High King was looking at us would have been more than enough to give the game away.

  “Nice place,” I said, breaking about twenty rules of etiquette and sending a titter spreading through the hall. None of the courtiers were gauche enough to laugh openly, of course, but their snickers and half-swallowed chuckles added up.