When Sorrows Come

by Seanan McGuire

  “None taken,” said Nolan.

  “But it’s all too common for the higher nobility to overlook anyone below the rank of Baron, and sometimes they don’t even remember the baronial titles when it comes time to account for their underlings.”

  “Are all the guards titled, then?”

  “Oh, yes.” Nessa led us along the hall, an earnest expression on her face. “The domains close enough to us to have easy access to our staffing needs send their second sons and daughters here to serve. The majority of the guard are knights and dames at the absolute least; most are barons or more. It keeps them occupied, and not planning insurrection.”

  “I see. Is that commonly known?”

  “It would have to be, wouldn’t it, since everyone is released come the end of their term of service,” said Nessa. “They go back to their home domains and resume whatever duties they have in their families, and we honor and remember them for their time with us.”

  “We knew when we were children that had our father been able to openly claim us, I would one day be expected to travel to Toronto to serve my time,” said Nolan. “Because he couldn’t, I couldn’t, and had Arden been called to the throne in the normal way of things, that would have put her at a disadvantage against our peers, who would already have known me, as we would have been brothers in arms. And sisters, I suppose. There should be a way to express that thought without getting hung up on the difference between the two . . .” He trailed off, expression turning pensive.

  “While Nolan invents modern gender theory, how long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “Since the High Kingdom was founded.” Nessa frowned. “You truly didn’t know?”

  “How would I?” I shrugged. “I’m a knight, but I earned my title, I didn’t inherit it. My mother has no title.” Amandine’s Firstborn, but that doesn’t come with a crown. Thankfully. If she were a literal fairy princess, she would be even more insufferable than she already is, and that’s really saying something. “My father, depending on which of them you’re referring to, was either absent or human during my childhood. Even if he’d somehow known I was going to be titled one day, he couldn’t have warned me about this particular practice.”

  If King Shallcross, whoever he was, was actually trying to destabilize the Westlands, arranging for the mass slaughter of the secondborn nobility might be a decent way to get started. And at least three members of the guard were dead after just this one day’s work.

  Although many of them being hereditary nobles made their poor performance in the banquet hall make a little more sense. Etienne had spent more than a few afternoons during my training ranting about hereditary knights and how they were never properly trained or tested, all because they were born of noble stock and assumed to know how to sheath a sword without stabbing themselves, whether they had even the slightest clue of which end to hold and which end to swing.

  I blinked, the thought that maybe this was why he’d been in no hurry to get Chelsea squired suddenly occurring to me. She’d never be able to live up to his impossibly high standards, and any knight who was willing to take her on would be doing it partially to please him, making it likely that her training would be brutal. The only knight I could think of who wouldn’t treat her differently because of who her father was . . .

  Was . . .

  I groaned, letting my head drop forward. Tybalt gave me a sidelong look. “Are you well?”

  “Just realized something about my future, which means it’s your future, too, which means I’ll tell you later.” I smiled as winningly as I could. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to interfere with the wedding.”

  “Why does that glib reassurance only make me worry more?” He shook his head, attention swinging back to Nessa. “The Court of Cats manages succession through different means, and we lack most of your lesser titles. There are no counts or barons among our number, no knights or marquesses or baronets. We have Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, and it is rare beyond remarking for a single Kingdom to have multiple possible heirs. We would never risk them by sending them away.”

  “You make us sound careless with our children,” said Nessa, sounding stung. “I assure you; the opposite is entirely the case. Service and fosterage are not the same. We do foster the children of noble houses who wish to send them here to learn the ways of our Court and will usually have some of them who choose to stay on at the end of their term of fosterage, dedicating themselves to service in turn. But never more than a few, and never against their will.”

  It was a system that would lend itself easily enough to abuse. Even if I assumed it hadn’t been abused in this specific situation, there would still be generations of nobles with intimate firsthand knowledge of the royal knowe. I was suddenly more glad than I could say that Quentin had been sent away from here when he had. For all that I’d gotten him shot, stabbed, tortured, and transformed, it felt like he was safer when he was with me.

  Maybe I was flattering myself. Maybe not. “Do you have a title, Nessa?” I asked abruptly.

  “Oh, I’m a dame,” she said. “Dame Nessa of Maples, that’s me. My mother was a Baroness of a small demesne in Beacon’s Home, which she chose to cede when she came to serve here, though she retained the title without the land. Because so much of the staff is titled one way or another, they tend to be recalcitrant when working with commoners, and as she intended to stay here with her sisters, she thought it best if she, and eventually I, had a title to brandish before them.”

  “And your father?”

  “I never knew the man, nor cared to. He was a minor noble, I’m sure, and as he never married my mother, I owe no debt to his lines.”

  Gwragedd Annwn are an interesting case among the sometimes surreal breeding patterns of the fae. Unlike the occasional all-female or all-male descendant line, they have both male and female children. But their blood doesn’t blend. A Gwragedd Annwn woman will always carry a Gwragedd Annwn child, period, no matter what the father contributed. The few changelings that have been sired by Gwragedd Annwn men have been uncommon enough that, while I’ve heard rumor, I don’t know of anyone who says for sure that they’ve met one.

  Mom seems to be the same way. Her children are always Dóchas Sidhe. I suppose only time, and someone else stupid enough to sleep with her, will tell us whether she can carry boys, or whether we’re destined to be nothing but a bunch of tiny duplicates of my grandmother, Janet Carter, whose blood has been removed almost entirely from our line, but still carries through in coloring and composition. We take “family resemblance” to an extreme new level.

  I nodded. “All right.”

  “I am sorry I had no opportunity to serve here and know you better,” said Nolan.

  “And I am sorry to have been surprised by the news that King Windermere had been a father,” said Nessa. “He was a kind man, considerate and devoted to the care of his kingdom. You could have done far worse for a family line.”

  So Nessa had known Gilad? It made a certain amount of sense, since I knew she’d been serving here for a long, long time. It still seemed like a stretch. Faerie makes coincidence inevitable, given enough time to spread itself across.

  “I could,” said Nolan. “He loved me and my sister both, and it’s not his fault he had to go.”

  “It rarely is,” Nessa agreed. She paused as we approached a set of double doors, finally freeing her hand from the bend of Nolan’s arm. He let her go reluctantly, looking disappointed that their mild flirtation seemed to be at an end.

  “I apologize if my duplicate has in some way interfered with the plan I was given for the room and will do my utmost to see whatever is wrong will be made right before the ceremony,” she said as she pushed the doors open, revealing an open-air courtyard that couldn’t possibly exist within the confines of the knowe. It didn’t make any sense, which meant it was part of the structure as it existed in the Summerlands.


  Nessa stepped through. Silent in the face of what I was seeing, I followed her.

  We were standing in what seemed to be a natural bowl eroded into the peak of a mountain. Even the air felt different, thinner and cleaner and so crisp it hurt the back of my throat, like it was coming from much higher up. The hillside around us was covered in trees, bushy-branched evergreens reaching for the lilac sky, where four suns, each smaller than the one at home, rotated through a long, slow dance.

  I’ve never been sure how the sky functions in the Summerlands. The number of moons and suns seems to be almost random, shifting from moment to moment regardless of whether there were that many the last time someone looked. The sky over Mom’s tower usually has at least three moons, but I’ve seen the number go as low as two and as high as seventeen. The constellations are equally changeable, varying night upon night—and the cycle of nights and days doesn’t really care about the passage of time, preferring to set itself to the internal clock of the local regent. For there to be that many suns overhead, High King Aethlin had to be pretty upset.

  The trees were veiled in sparkling silver and diamond white, like the perfect fairytale snowfall had dusted them lightly before moving on, not accumulating on the ground, which was all dark loam and mossy green, forming a perfect, remarkably curated pathway deeper into the bowl. Nessa kept walking, and we followed, gaping like schoolchildren on their first trip to the museum.

  The path’s natural end was obvious, coming as it did to a small dais made of polished maple—of course—and flanked by two long staves that looked for all the world like maypoles, garlanded in ropes of roses and peonies. There was less pink than I’d been worried about after seeing May’s ideas about appropriate wedding flowers. That was nice. So was the outdoor setting, which felt about as close as it was possible for me to get to being married in Muir Woods.

  Multiple rows of chairs had been set up around the dais, filling the base of the depression with space for our friends and families. The boundaries of the path, the space in front of the dais where I assumed we were meant to stand, and even the rows themselves, were marked with tiny toadstools that glowed a deep shade of lavender when Nessa approached them, reacting to her presence like the motion-detector lights in a supermarket.

  I glanced at Tybalt. He was beaming, eyes flicking from one aspect of the natural amphitheater to the next, looking more settled with every passing moment.

  “Normally, we would have trapped and released pixies to provide lighting, since the suns will likely be down come time for the marriage proper,” said Nessa. “However, your fiancé was very firm that you would not appreciate what he referred to as ‘the exploitation of our smallest kin,’ and that if we wanted them, we would have to invite them as guests. Some of the kitchen staff will be going to the locations frequented by the local flocks in the morning, to buy them donuts and offer them an opportunity to attend. So I’m afraid I can’t guarantee how well-lit the space will be.”

  It took me a moment to realize she was speaking to me. I blinked. “Oh, um, yeah, he’s right, I definitely prefer the option that doesn’t make all the local pixies hate us. I have a pretty good relationship with the pixies in the Mists, and I don’t know how often they migrate.”

  Nessa nodded. “Even so, we’ll have witch-lights on reserve in case they prove necessary. Does this meet with your expectations?”

  “It’s perfect,” said Tybalt. “When I requested an outdoor area or courtyard, I didn’t expect you to have access to a proper cirque.”

  “Maples has been shaped by glacial progress both in the Summerlands and in the mortal world,” said Nessa. “The knowe was built to incorporate and accommodate the local mountains. If you kept walking west, you would come to the croquet fields and the children’s wing.”

  Sometimes trying to figure out how knowes reconcile the two aspects of their existence gives me a genuine headache. Maybe that’s why we get along so well. They’re changelings, too, in their own way.

  “What time is it?” I asked abruptly. “We left the Mists at like, ten o’clock at night, and I know it’s three hours later here. But what time is it now?”

  “The sun just rose in the mortal world,” said Nessa. “Today is your wedding day, Sir Daye, and I am honored to be the first to say such to you.”

  Ah. Swell.

  Tybalt looked at me and smiled, and I managed, barely, to dredge up the same expression in response.

  Well, damn.

  sixteen

  Stacy and Kerry watched without sympathy as I paced back and forth in the enclosed space of the changing room. I was gesturing wildly as I paced, whacking my hands against racks of dresses I’d never seen before and was absolutely sure I didn’t own. Where Stacy had gotten the budget for this many changes of clothing, I didn’t want to know. Someone’s college fund had probably been raided to pay for components.

  She was still wearing her little bridal veil headband, and if it wouldn’t have made Tybalt kill me, I might have suggested we trade places. Just until my heart stopped beating so damn hard.

  “—even came from,” I said. “One second I was going ‘yay, finally going to have this crossed off the list,’ and the next second, it was like the whole world was pressing down on top of me.”

  “You want to take this one, or shall I?” asked Kerry.

  “You go find the group Chelsea just brought in and see if it included Julie,” said Stacy. “We’re going to need to get the band back together for this.”

  “What?” I demanded, snapping out of the conversation I’d been admittedly mostly having with myself. Stacy and Kerry had been sitting, nodding, and interjecting the occasional understanding noise since I’d arrived. “Julie’s not coming to my wedding. Julie hates me.”

  They exchanged a look. “Well, I hope someone told Julie that, because last time I checked with May, Tybalt had put her on the guest list, and she had RSVP’d ‘yes,’ ” said Kerry carefully. “Maybe she hates you a little less than you think she does.”

  “That’s ridiculous; he wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Or maybe he just assumed that if you couldn’t find a reason to bleed on your wedding dress, you’d invent one, and wanted to give you a decent starting point.” Stacy rose, crossing to smooth the wrinkles out of my collar and tuck my hair back behind my ears. “That man really loves you, October.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Because this looks like a pretty severe case of cold feet, and while that’s normal and okay and even expected, you need to chill out before he comes looking and realizes something’s wrong.” Stacy settled her hands on my shoulders, looking at me gravely as Kerry slipped out of the room. “Your abandonment issues are not new to me. You’ve been my best friend since I was a kid, and I know how your head works. When something seems like it’s too good for you, you run away from it as fast as you can. You ran away from Shadowed Hills when Sylvester wanted to take care of you—”

  “Which we now know he only did because I’m his niece and he felt obligated,” I muttered.

  Stacy sighed. “—and as soon as you started feeling like you could be really happy at Home, you went and found yourself a human to fall in love with, because you had enough self-hatred from dealing with your mother to feel like anything involving a human couldn’t possibly end happily ever after. Don’t you argue with me. I can see you getting ready to start, and you’re not going to win.”

  I shut my mouth.

  “You’re getting nervous because you’re getting close to actually marrying the man, and once he puts a ring on your finger or a tiara on your head or whatever weird bullshit it is they do at pureblood weddings—and believe me, I’m so excited to watch you get subjected to it that I could just spit—you’re going to have to admit what the rest of us have known for years.” She finally took her hands off me and stepped back, giving me space to move. “Which is that the boy is stupid in love w
ith you. He makes you better. He makes you care enough about yourself to actually take care of yourself once in a while. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen you voluntarily sit down and eat a sandwich? I wasn’t even surprised when we found out that your secret superpower is recovering from whatever sort of abuse you want to put your body through, but I was a little disappointed. Maybe if some of the bruises you got would last more than five minutes, you’d at least pretend not to think everyone who loves you is a fool!”

  “I never said that,” I protested, blinking and resisting the urge to gape at her.

  Stacy glared at me. “Yes, you did. Every time you forgot to eat for three days, you did. Every time you stopped sleeping because you had to do something that might finally make your mother proud of you, you did. Every time you decided you could challenge someone five times your size to a fistfight in an alley. Every bad decision that reminded us how much you think you’re expendable was another reminder that you think we’re all liars or losers for daring to love you. Honestly, I’m not sure which is more insulting.”

  “Stacy, I . . .” I rubbed my face with one hand. “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I’m trying to do better. I am doing better. You’re right, because Tybalt makes me feel like I have to do better to be as good as the person he sees when he looks at me. But not just him. Quentin. He’s my squire. He depends on me to take care of him, and that means taking care of myself once in a while. And May.”

  “You built yourself a family.” Stacy offered me a wan smile. “I just wish the people who’ve been there since the beginning had been enough to provide you with the foundation you needed.”

  My mouth moved silently, not finding the words I needed to tell her how much of my foundation she was; how essential she was to me, even when she wasn’t in the room. She was a constant. Sometimes the only constant, it felt like, the one brick in the wall that, if removed, would bring the whole thing crashing down. The words, if they even existed, refused to come, and so I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around her, and pulled her tight against me, hoping she’d understand.