“Oh, no? Why not try asking the Crown Prince, greatest living threat to his father’s rule? I’m sure he would have a few things to say about tyranny.”
Fiac still wasn’t reacting. That’s the trouble with lie detectors, whether magical or mundane: they can’t help you if the person you’re trying to catch genuinely believes what they’re saying is the truth. Still, maybe I was missing something. Carefully, I asked, “Crown Prince Quentin Sollys?”
“What, was there ever another one?” The Doppelganger sipped its water, seemingly unperturbed. “He was sent away on ‘blind fosterage,’ and disappeared, just as he was getting old enough to learn the truth about his parents. If you could find him—if he’s even still alive—he could tell you a great many things.”
Only the presence of the guards, who probably didn’t know where Quentin was being fostered, kept me from busting out laughing. If I’d looked at Cassandra or Tybalt, I would have lost my composure instantly. Instead, I schooled my face to careful neutrality and said, “That’s an interesting way to look at things, since blind fosterage has been a tradition for centuries. Can you tell me about the High King’s tyranny?”
“The usual. Theft of land, theft of crown, theft of the lives of the hundreds of common folk who serve and suffer under him, who should be free to pursue their own passions in life, not serve at the pleasure of an unforgiving king.” The Doppelganger sipped its water again. It seemed to be enjoying this. “All kings are monsters.”
“It sounds like you want to overthrow the entire monarchal system.” That was a lot more ambitious than I had ever been. Sure I’d replaced a couple of monarchs who weren’t treating their people fairly, but I had never aspired to taking down the system, mostly because I didn’t feel like I was in any way qualified to decide what was going to come next. Democracy didn’t seem to work all that much better; it just came with fewer beheadings.
“No,” said the Doppelganger. “The people I’m working for aren’t interested in throwing a perfectly good system away. They just want to make sure it’s replaced by something closer to what it was always intended to be, and that begins with putting the rightful King on the High Throne.”
I raised an eyebrow. This was all sounding very calm and logical, and when added to the speech the Doppelganger had given us upon our arrival, it pointed to one clear conspirator. But surely no one who was going to make a run at the High King would be that stupid?
“So tell me,” I said pleasantly, “how long have you been working for the Shallcross family?”
The Doppelganger sipped its water one last time before putting the tumbler calmly down, transforming again, this time into an exact duplicate of Tybalt. “They were always meant to hold the High Throne, you know,” it said, in an eerie replica of his voice. “No one knew about the iron in the harbor, but the convocation that was called somehow locked king to kingdom, rather than looking at what was best for the continent. It should have been High King Shallcross of Maples, not High King Sollys. The theft was committed in the dead of night, quick and clean and all but unremarked. You serve an imposter.”
“And it was a long time ago, and if your employers were going to try and do something about it, that should have happened almost as long ago,” I said. “You’ve condemned yourself for nothing more than sour grapes. I hope they paid you enough to justify losing everything.”
“We’ll see who loses everything,” said the Doppelganger, and leapt, heading straight for the High King, hands up, fingers hooked, and claws exposed.
The guards had taken the creature’s weapons away and given it no replacements. But Tybalt was a King of Cats. He didn’t have weapons that could be taken away, and no matter how much he shifted his form toward the Daoine Sidhe “ideal,” he would always have his claws. The Doppelganger’s recreation of those claws were easily an inch long and wickedly sharp, primed to strike and cut.
“Look out!” I shouted. I know better than to get in the way of Tybalt’s claws, whether or not they were really his. Tybalt slashed my throat open with them once, when he was under the control of the false Queen of the Mists, who had used the talents inherited from the Siren side of her heritage to seize his will and turn him into her puppet. I’d been more mortal then, but it had still hurt like hell, and poor Tybalt had been shy of touching me for what had felt like weeks afterward, convinced that any moment I was going to come to my senses and blame him for what he’d done.
I couldn’t say for sure whether he’d react the same way to me getting flensed by a Doppelganger wearing his face, but I could say that I didn’t want to find out right before my wedding night. There are some sacrifices too great to be made even for the sake of a High King. Still, I wasn’t going to go back to Quentin and tell him I’d stood idly by while his father died. I drew my knife, angling my body in front of the High King, ready to defend him. Cassandra, wisely, had already taken a step back, early enough that I guessed she’d seen this moment coming—although not with enough time to give us a warning. Stupid prophetic gifts.
Two things happened at the same time. One of the guards drew his sword with the distinct shimmering twang of metal scraping against hide, and Tybalt leapt, matching the Doppelganger’s approach with his own. He roared as he moved, and the two of them became, briefly, a rolling, roiling ball of limbs and flailing claws. I backed up, knife at the ready, prepared to defend myself if necessary. It didn’t seem likely to be necessary.
One of the Tybalts caught the other by the hair and slammed his forehead into the wall. There was a cracking sound, and the Tybalt who’d been injured groaned, swiping feebly around behind himself. I wanted to intervene. It wasn’t like I was exactly concerned about my own safety. But when I tried to press forward, Tybalt waved me off, and I had to trust that my centuries-old fiancé could handle himself against a shapeshifter bad enough at infiltration to have made such obvious mistakes.
Tybalt slammed the other Tybalt’s head against the wall again, and the second Tybalt blurred, features melting into a mixture of Tybalt’s and Nessa’s, wavering like it couldn’t decide which face was more likely to see it to safety. A trickle of greenish blood ran down its cheek from a cut just under the eye.
“Ack,” it said.
“Good job, hon,” I said brightly. “Excellent violence. A plus.”
There was a noise from behind me, and I turned just in time to watch the second guard pull a dagger that was shaped remarkably like my own out of the High King’s back. Aethlin fell silently, eyes very wide.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” said the guard, raising the dagger, and slit his own throat.
Fiac, still bound, watched him fall with a dismayed expression on his face. Then he looked at me, suddenly gone pale as whey.
“No lies here,” he said—and fainted.
thirteen
“Sire!” I dropped my knife and rushed to kneel at the High King’s side, falling to my knees and reaching for his head, like that was going to help when he’d just been stabbed in the back. The remaining guard was standing next to Fiac, sword in hand, looking baffled. His position was probably why the second Doppelganger hadn’t killed them both.
“Is he alive?” asked Fiac, who had risen from the floor after a relatively short period of shocked unconsciousness.
“Yes, for now,” I said, already regretting the speed with which I’d dropped my knife. Approaching the fallen High King with a weapon in my hand hadn’t seemed like a good idea, in the half-second I’d been given to decide what was or wasn’t a good idea. And now here I was, with no reasonable means of making myself bleed.
“He doesn’t have long,” said Cassandra. “Aunt Birdie—”
“I know. I know.”
Aethlin was breathing, little hitches of his chest that sounded increasingly labored. The knife had been slotted between his ribs, probably piercing a kidney, and he could be bleeding out internally.
The knife. The Dopp
elganger’s knife was less than a foot from the High King’s body, as yet untouched by the spreading pool of ichor that was all that remained of the actual Doppelganger. They melt when killed, creating a horrible, caustic slime that never comes out of carpet.
Go on. Ask me how I know.
Suddenly realizing what I had to do, I lunged for the Doppelganger’s knife, only for the remaining guard to slam his sword into the carpet bare inches from my fingers.
“No, king-breaker,” he snarled. “You will not harm him farther.”
“She’s on his side!” cried Cassandra.
I did my best not to get distracted, focusing on the guard. “I’m not trying to harm him, he’s Daoine Sidhe, that makes him a blood-worker, I’m Dóchas Sidhe, I heal like it’s a contest, if I can make myself bleed, I can help him.” I was talking fast, all too aware that the High King’s time was limited. He was going to lose consciousness soon, if he hadn’t already, and then he wouldn’t be able to use the magic he got from my blood, no matter how useful it could have been. We were on a countdown, and I didn’t know how much time was left before we ran out of options.
The guard looked to Fiac hopelessly, clearly awaiting the Adhene’s answer before he made his final decision. Fiac looked briefly pained, looking between the two of us, then sighed and settled on a mild:
“She speaks truth. Let the girl try.”
The guard pulled back his sword, a mistrustful expression on his face, and I grabbed the knife, covered as it was with the High King’s blood.
In a mortal setting, at a mortal crime scene, interfering with the weapon would have been the worst thing we could do. But here—the Doppelganger wouldn’t have left any useful fingerprints behind. If it left any, they belonged to the missing guard, not to the dead monster. And we already knew the High King had been stabbed, so contaminating his blood wasn’t a concern.
“Tybalt?” I called, voice higher and less steady than I liked.
“Yes?”
“Is it dead?”
“Very.” He didn’t sound satisfied or smug about that. He just sounded tired.
“Good,” I said, and slashed the knife down the length of my arm, cutting deep before dropping the blade to the floor, in easy reach in case I needed to cut myself again. Hopefully not. I needed this wound to last for at least a few seconds. The blood was hot and immediate, cascading free, and I moved my arm, pressing it to the High King’s mouth.
“Come on, come on,” I said. “Drink and get better.”
Did his lips move? Did he swallow? I couldn’t tell. I kept my arm in place until it had healed completely, then sat back on my heels, watching the High King’s motionless form sink just that little bit deeper into the carpet. I couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead, and I didn’t want to be the one to find out one way or another.
“Is he alive?” demanded the guard. I gave him a hopeless look, sighed, and began to bend forward, to press my ear to the High King’s chest.
I was still in motion when Aethlin gasped, opened his eyes, and sat up, all at the same time. Unfortunately, the speed of the gesture meant his forehead cracked against mine, sending me reeling. He stayed where he was, looking wildly around.
“Sire?” asked the remaining guard.
Aethlin turned slowly to look at him. “Artyom?” he said, sounding puzzled, like he hadn’t been expecting to see his own guard.
“Yes, sire,” said the guard, with naked relief in his voice.
Tybalt, meanwhile, was moving to help me up, hooking his hands under my arms and tugging me back to my feet. I let him, doing my best to get my feet under myself and help the process along.
Lips close to my ear, he murmured, “Are you well?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He didn’t even hit me hard enough to crack the bone. I’ll be fine as soon as I’ve had a chance to catch my breath.” My stomach grumbled. “And eat a sandwich or something.”
“Yes, or something,” he agreed.
“Maybe two sandwiches,” suggested Cassandra.
There was a marshy patch on the carpet behind Tybalt, green sludge spreading out across the kitchen floor. He looked shaken, like he was on the verge of tears, and there was nothing romantic about the way he ran his hands along me. He was checking for injuries that had somehow failed to heal, not trying to get inappropriately frisky in front of the High King.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you and the High King.”
Fiac had moved, despite his hands still being tied, to give Aethlin something to lean against as he levered himself off the floor. The back of the High King’s tunic was completely soaked through with blood, as was the carpet where he had fallen. This had been an unreasonably nice cell, as prisons went; they were going to be rewarded for that with a remarkable amount of cleaning. Well, at least their Bannicks would be happy.
The last guard—Artyom—moved to put himself between Aethlin and Fiac and the two of us. “What did you do to the High King?” he demanded.
“Healed him,” I said. “Saved his life. You’re welcome.” Aethlin still looked dazed. I sighed and relented, explaining, “He’s a blood-worker and he’s just swallowed a considerable amount of my blood. He’ll lose access to my magic soon enough, but my memories may linger a little longer.”
Aethlin swung his head around, staring at me with wide, puzzled eyes.
“You’re you,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“You’re October Daye.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m October Daye.”
“No,” I said, and remained exactly where I was as his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor in a dead faint. Artyom stepped between us again, sword at the ready. I sighed heavily. “I think we’re going to need to get some backup in here. Tybalt . . . ?”
“I came with you on a simple questioning, and you found two Doppelgangers and the High King got stabbed,” he said. “Why you would think me willing to leave you is entirely beyond me.”
“Because you love me and don’t want Artyom here to arrest me for crimes against the High King?” I said, as endearingly as I could. “I will stay right here, and I will not stab anyone, including myself, unless it’s in self-defense. But we need someone else who understands blood magic and is unquestionably loyal to the crown, which means we need the High Queen.” Technically, we had two members of our little crew who could potentially help someone who was struggling with blood memories, Dean and—no. No, Quentin couldn’t help.
Quentin had traded his natural magic for a Banshee’s compelling, repelling wail. He couldn’t help. And Dean’s natural magic had always been somewhat suppressed by the unique blend of his heritage, which seemed to focus most of its energy on keeping him locked in an air-breathing shape, rather than sliding into a form that couldn’t breathe on land or in water. He’d never shown any inclination toward transformation, but the magic didn’t lie.
“I’ll make sure she behaves herself,” said Cassie. “Cross my heart. And you should go. The air says you’ll be able to convince the High Queen to come.”
Tybalt blinked, but as Fiac didn’t contradict her, he couldn’t really argue. Instead, he made a frustrated sound and turned to rest his forehead against mine, sighing deeply.
“You are running out of reasons to bid me to leave you behind, little fish,” he said. “Be careful you do not exhaust your supply. It will not, I fear, regenerate as quickly as you do.” Then he kissed the bridge of my nose and wrenched himself away, walking in long strides toward the wall.
Fiac was looking oddly at Cassandra. “I don’t know you,” he said. “I know all the seers of the Westlands, but I don’t know you. How does the air speak to you, girl I don’t know?”
“The High King has been poisoned,” said Artyom sharply. “I think we have bigger concerns than a girl you don’t know.”<
br />
Fiac sighed, turning briefly to me. “This is the trouble with putting most of your magic into seeing the truth,” he said. “We can’t be around people unless they’re so careful with us that it’s not sustainable, and so our numbers dwindle, since we can’t even stand each other most of the time, and people still lie to us, or twist the truth to suit what they want it to be, and it doesn’t rouse our tempers because they don’t know they’re lying. If I had just come into this room, I would believe him when he said the High King had been poisoned, and all my wrath would be for you.”
“And now?” I asked carefully.
“Now I know what I saw, and I know what a blood-worker overwhelmed by stronger magic looks like.” Fiac shook his head. “I might be able to blame you if you had bled to prove your good intentions, or to share a memory, but given you bled to save my liege’s life, it’s not fair to hold you responsible if he’s blood-drunk on what he got from you. He’ll recover.”
“But—” protested Artyom.
“No,” said Fiac. “No buts. She didn’t poison the man, and right now, I have no more important concerns than how she can be traveling with a seer I don’t know. We’re few and far between in this world. Eira Rosynhwyr saw to that.”
I blinked. I knew Eira had been responsible for the original slaughter of the Roane, as part of an elaborate attempt to make a monster of her sister—to make the Luidaeg seem like the one who had wiped out her own descendant line, one of the few crimes unique to the Firstborn, and one of the few that Faerie could never forgive. This was the first I’d heard of her targeting all prophets.
I’d wondered, of course, whether that could have been a part of her motivation, whether she’d worried the Roane would foresee and reveal some other plan of hers and twist it somehow out of true. It was impossible not to wonder. But I’d never wondered whether she could have been going after other seers, too. Maybe that explained why they were so rare. Having one of the most ruthless of the Firstborn targeting them without concern for the consequences would certainly have done a lot to reduce their numbers.
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