Even if the doorknob had been made of cold iron, which it distinctly wasn’t, having the same coppery sheen as all the others we’d passed, just touching it wouldn’t have been enough to kill a man. I knelt, unwrapping the bundle I’d taken from Raj and laying it on the floor in front of me. Avoiding iron for the boys meant their kits had taken one of two forms—antique or ultra-modern—and ironically, both options left them ill-prepared for high security locks. The titanium in Quentin’s kit was too thick, while the bronze and carved wood in Raj’s kit was too soft.
They’d graduate to hardened faerie silver eventually, when I thought they were ready for more difficult locks, and in the meantime, Raj’s tools would be good enough for the level of security I’d seen thus far inside the knowe. Most knowes don’t invest in very good internal locks. Why would they? You need to have made it past the wards and past the initial inspection, whatever form that took, to reach any door worth opening. It would have been a foolish investment of resources. I pulled the tweezers and jeweler’s loupe from Raj’s kit, leaning closer still, trying to find any part of the doorknob that didn’t match up with the rest.
It was so subtle I could easily have missed it, even taking my time and looking closely. On the left side of the knob, concealed against the shaft, someone had affixed a small mechanism that didn’t quite match the metal around it. It wasn’t a total mismatch, just a rectangle of slightly duller metal, like someone had failed to fully polish it. Carefully, I leaned forward and pressed against it with the tip of the tweezers.
It was a simple spring mechanism, but it was still deeply unnerving when the edge of the plate snapped forward and a needle stabbed out, hitting nothing but empty air. I held up my free hand, signaling the others to stay back.
“I’m going to need a minute to disassemble this safely,” I said. “If someone could get me a rowan jar, that would be fantastic.”
Yes, wooden jars exist. They’re not common, glass being so much cheaper and having the advantage of transparency, but they exist, and they’re not difficult for even a semi-competent woodturner to make. Rowan wood has a dampening effect on iron; it would make it safer to keep the little mechanism, even if there wasn’t much we’d be able to learn from it.
“Go,” snapped Aethlin, looking to the Redcap guard, who nodded curtly, spun on his heel, and ran away down the hall. He was probably relieved to have an excuse to get away from the corpse and the taint of iron hanging in the air. “Sir Daye, what did you find?”
“Someone set a trap on this doorknob,” I said. “Poisoned needle under a pressure plate. I mean, I’m guessing on the poison, since we haven’t given this thing to Walther to analyze yet—”
“Walther?” asked Aethlin, sounding faintly baffled.
“Oh, he’s one of our wedding guests. He’s also Arden’s court alchemist, and the one who developed the cure for elf-shot. You met him at the convocation.” I continued prodding the mechanism, trying to verify that it was as straightforward as it seemed. It didn’t seem to have any backup attacks concealed behind its thin metallic frame, but did I want to risk my life on that? No.
We were pretty sure I was unkillable, and to be fair, I had recovered from half a dozen different ways to die. But I could still be elf-shot, and the poison still stayed in my system long enough to require administration of the cure before I woke up. Magic could still hurt me. If this was a magical poison—and who uses a purely mundane poison inside a knowe? That would be silly—there was a chance it could do the impossible and kill me.
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Tybalt cleared his throat and said mildly, “I would prefer not to be a widower before I’ve enjoyed my wedding night. Please be careful.”
“I am,” I said. “Anyway, whatever’s on this, Walther will be able to work it out in no time.”
“I have my own alchemists,” said Aethlin. “I know them, and I trust them.”
I did twist and look around at that, taking in the small formation behind me; Raj and Tybalt, the two guards, and the High King. Not a predictable combination from where the night had started—but an understandable one. “I am willing to wager a good deal on the fact that you have not spent as much time, even cumulatively, with your court alchemists as I have with Walther,” I said. “He has saved my life on multiple occasions, and I trust him completely. If your own seneschal could be replaced for some unknown period of time without anyone noticing, how can I trust that your alchemists, with whom you do not have remotely as much contact, would not have suffered the same fate? Hmm? Give me a good reason, and I’ll stand down. Or don’t, and we’ll use my alchemist.”
“You can’t speak to him like that,” snarled the Daoine Sidhe guard, whose shock and grief was apparently beginning the transition into anger. Well, that was probably easier to carry, at least for a little while.
Grief is a weight that you can’t put down, only transmute into other things, and once it lands on your shoulders, you have to wait for time’s erosion to lift it off. We’re all Atlas, in a way. We carry all the sins of our past, and all the things we think we’ve lost, and we might as well do it forever for as long as it can seem to last.
“I can, I did, and I will, and I wouldn’t talk if I were you, since I haven’t seen the royal guard exactly covering themselves in glory so far,” I said, with what must have seemed like almost obscene cheerfulness. “I’m not sure how big ‘the realm’ is, whether it’s kingdom by kingdom or what, but Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists declared me a hero of the realm, and we’ve got a dead man and a poisoned doorknob and a missing seneschal and a Doppelganger on our hands here, so I’d say this is pretty solidly hero territory, and that means it’s absolutely my territory, and telling people what they need to do if they want this to work out for the best is a big part of my job.”
“Is that so?” Aethlin’s voice was mild, but when I shifted my attention back to him, there was something in his eyes that I would have called amusement if a member of his guard hadn’t been sprawled dead on the ground between us. “For your information, ‘the realm’ is usually accounted kingdom by kingdom, although as being a hero really only gives you the authority to call yourself by that title and to be asked to involve yourself in rather ridiculous amounts of trouble, I have no qualms about assigning the role to you here as well as at home.”
“Great, then it is literally my job to tell the High King that we’ll be using my alchemist, who I’m sure will be thrilled to find out he’s going to be working during my wedding. Then again, so am I.”
“I am shocked, shocked that you have managed to involve yourself so quickly in an apparently ongoing crisis of the monarchy,” said Tybalt dryly.
The air next to him ripped open, and a slender figure clad in the royal livery slipped through, like an acrobat through a hoop. Two globes of yellow-white light followed them through, rising promptly to spin in air at roughly eye level. The figure bowed deeply and formally to the king, then offered him a small jar of rowan wood.
“Give it to her, Caitir,” said Aethlin, pointing at me. “This is our visiting hero, Sir October Daye in the Mists. She’s the one who requested the jar.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said the Candela, bobbing a quick curtsy before turning on her heel and walking toward me. I held out my hand, waiting for the jar. She dropped it into my palm.
“You may all want to move back,” I said. The guards didn’t like that. They moved to put themselves more firmly between me and the High King, stranding Caitir in the middle. That wasn’t as big of a problem as it might have been; as she had just so aptly demonstrated, Candela can teleport, shortcutting through the shadows in a much simpler, faster way than the Cait Sidhe.
I wonder if Candela who live in a place where there are no Cait Sidhe find their access to the Shadow Roads disrupted, or if the anchors the Cait Sidhe provide apply only to the Court of Cats.
Her Merry Dancers spun lazily around her
head, getting brighter when they faced me, reflecting her curiosity. “You should probably also move back,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I remove this.”
She frowned, then turned and dove into the shadows that had gathered at the bend of the hall, vanishing. She reappeared a moment later, behind the rest of the group, expression perfectly serene.
Teleporters. They never seem to believe distance exists for the rest of us. I pulled the lid off the wooden jar—it slotted into the container like a bolt, rather than screwing onto the top like a nut—and maneuvered it carefully under the little metal plate, setting it on the floor. “I’m going to take this off now,” I said as I picked up the largest of Raj’s lockpicks, using it to pry up the edge of the plate while I used the tweezers to press it down, keeping the needle in sight the whole time.
It was well-concealed but not particularly well affixed. After only a few seconds of prying, it came off with a scraping sound and fell, tumbling toward the waiting jar.
It did not bounce off. It did not swerve in midair and stab me in the arm. For once, the thing did exactly as it was meant to do, behaved exactly as it was meant to behave, and I was able to put the lid on the jar and stand, offering it to whoever wanted to take it. “This goes to Walther Davies,” I said firmly. “Blond man, Tylwyth Teg, traveling with my group. You really can’t miss him.” For one thing, he was our only blond. For another, he was our only Tylwyth Teg. We were rich in Daoine Sidhe, but Tylwyth Teg tend to be a little thinner on the ground.
One of the guards cautiously took the jar. “Are you sure that was the only trap?” asked Aethlin briskly.
“On the doorknob, yes; that’s what stabbed Aron in the hand, and killed him before he could hit the ground,” I said. “There could be more traps inside.”
“Understood,” he said. “Caitir?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said the Candela, and stepped backward into shadow, vanishing. I stared, first at the space where she had been, and then at the High King.
“We don’t know what’s in there, and you sent her in alone,” I said slowly and with great deliberation. Raj stepped away from the High King and slightly behind Tybalt, trying to look nonchalant about it, like he wasn’t getting out of the potential blast radius. “You sent a single Candela, alone, into a room that could contain a corpse—and that’s sort of our best-case option right now since the whole place could be trapped to Annwn and back.”
“It was that or continue to wait for you to open the door,” said Aethlin implacably. “This seemed the more efficient option.”
I stared at him for a moment. “We have two Cait Sidhe with us,” I said finally. “If sending someone in, alone, without a way to scout ahead, were the most efficient option, don’t you think I would have already sent one of them?”
For the first time, the High King’s confidence appeared to waver. I couldn’t tell whether it was because he was listening to me, or because his Candela had yet to return. Caitir was hopefully alone in there, and not setting off any more traps, but we had no real way of knowing. I turned back to the door, putting the King behind me.
I didn’t have to wait long for the reaction to that. “A commoner does not turn her back on the High King,” snapped one of the guards.
“Not a commoner,” I replied, studying the door, especially the seams between it and the wall. The hinges were external—again, bad, if sadly predictable, security—and I could see that they hadn’t been tampered with, at least not on this side. That was a small break. “Knighted for services to the crown of the Mists, named hero of the realm by the Queen in the Mists, acknowledged as such by the High King, just now, in your hearing. If I need to turn my back on him to do my job, he can understand the necessity and forgive me for it.”
There was no more iron anywhere on the door. That didn’t mean I wanted to touch it with my bare hands. One of the first real killers I ever met was Oleander de Merelands, and she specialized in poisons. Contact poison was one of her favorite tricks. I stooped to wrap the hem of my dress around my hand, then stepped forward and grasped the doorknob.
People who put deadly traps on doorknobs often forget the obvious, which is that it’s a good idea to lock doors. The knob turned easily, and I jumped back as the door swung inward, revealing the short entry hall of what looked like a plushly furnished chamber. It wasn’t as large as the one where I’d been expecting to stay with Tybalt—we were probably going to have to move now, or at least have the place thoroughly swept for traps, several times—but it was equally well-appointed, at least from the slice I could see.
Of course, that slice included a motionless Candela lying sprawled on the floor, which was a little less pleasant to look upon.
“Caitir!” shouted one of the guards, and the Satyr rushed past me, diving into the room without glancing back. If he had accomplished nothing else, Aethlin had done a good job of convincing his people to be loyal to each other.
As the Satyr ran, there was a small snapping sound from floor level. I jumped away, putting still more distance between me and the open door. It was a good idea. The wire he’d broken was apparently connected to a small silver dipper hidden along the line of the wall near ceiling level. It snapped down, showering him in glittering green dust. He kept running for several more steps before he started to wheeze, clutching at his throat in terrified confusion, and collapsed to the floor next to Caitir.
I spun around, focusing on the sole remaining guard. “Get the High King out of here now,” I snapped, then switched my attention to Aethlin. “Sire, I need to secure this location, sweep for further traps, and get your people out of there, assuming they’re not both dead.”
Aethlin had gone pale and was staring in horrified fascination at the two unmoving bodies visible through the open door. “Y . . . yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. You have my permission to do whatever you feel necessary to resolve this and bring Nessa home, if possible.”
“Yes, Sire,” I said, dismissing him as I turned to Raj. “Go back to the others. Tell May I need her to get the biggest canister of canned frosting Kerry has, and that she, Jazz, and Cillian should come join us as quickly as possible.” “Cillian” was our code name for Quentin. Hidden in plain sight or no, he was still my squire, and I wanted his help.
“On it,” said Raj, and dove into shadow, vanishing. The Daoine Sidhe guard was already hurrying Aethlin away down the hall, leaving me alone with Tybalt and the corpses.
So a pretty normal date night for us, really.
“Canned frosting?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Kerry’s addicted to the stuff,” I said. “She puts it on her Oreos, and I’ve seen her use it to make cheap-ass eclairs by shooting it into donuts from the grocery store bakery case. I can’t imagine she came to Toronto to make a formal wedding cake without bringing an entire case of it.”
“And what are you planning to do with, ah, canned frosting?”
“Spray it all over that damn hallway,” I said. “The problem with relying on tripwires is that not everyone has the same gait. A Silene will step higher than a Bridge Troll. So there are probably multiple wires set, with multiple associated traps. I hate to leave them in there when there’s any chance they’re still alive, but . . .”
“But if you decide you’re willing to die rather than marry me, I will be deeply disappointed,” said Tybalt, voice dropping lower and taking on an undertone of resignation that I didn’t like one little bit.
I took the three steps necessary to close the distance between us and touched his cheek, trying not to dwell on how often I ran off alone when danger loomed, and how not seeing that look on the faces of the people who cared about me was at least half of why. It’s a lot harder to be casually self-destructive when people keep looking distressed about it.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m not charging in there without a plan. I’m not being stupid about this. I’m going t
o marry you, and I’m going to do it this week, in Toronto, before Kerry’s cake has time to get stale.” Which was a sort of ridiculous thing to say, since Kerry had probably layered that thing in so many preservation spells that it would still be good on my hundredth birthday.
It was also apparently the right thing to say, because some of the tension left Tybalt’s shoulders. Not all of it—we were still standing in front of a room potentially full of traps and at least one corpse.
Delaying the night-haunts’ dinner is a hobby of mine, I guess.
The smell of pepper and burnt paper came from behind me a split second before Raj was tapping on my shoulder. Because his magic had already given his location away, I neither jumped nor stabbed him, only turned and held out my hand.
“May and the others are on their way,” he said, dropping a canister of spray frosting, the shitty kind they sell in grocery stores, into my hand. “Cillian knows how to get here, and he seemed relieved to have something to do.”
“I thought I told you to have May get the frosting.” Kerry guarded her sweets jealously, and always had. She didn’t know Raj well enough to have handed the can over voluntarily.
“I told her it was an emergency, and that you’d buy her fancy Canadian canned frosting as an apology.” Raj shrugged. “It seemed more efficient.”
It was, and I was putting off dealing with the room. That wasn’t kind to the people inside, who might not be past saving, or to the High King, who had to live with the knowledge that he’d sent one of his courtiers in there without thinking through the possible consequences. All these deaths were on the person who’d set the traps, but some of them also belonged, a little bit, to him.
I walked back to the doorway, shook the frosting canister as hard as I could, and started spraying bright pink frosting into the room. Silly String would have worked better, since it wouldn’t have broken when it hit the wires, but the frosting was vividly colored, and it stuck to the wires as it hit them, making them increasingly visible as it built and caked along their length.
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