A Red-Rose Chain

by Seanan McGuire

  Pulling my eyes away from the flute of goblin fruit juice, I forced myself to study the servant. She was thin, yes, but not so thin that I suspected her of starving herself. She’d been able to resist temptation, at least so far. I didn’t dare try to breathe in her heritage with the goblin fruit so close. Going by the shape of her chin and the dark green color of her pupils, I guessed she was half Hamadryad, which might explain her resistance. Hamadryads were always better at avoiding poisons than the rest of us.

  But the entire kitchen couldn’t be staffed by Hamadryads, and there was no way a King who would make his serving girls pour goblin fruit would send a pureblood into the servants’ quarters to make juice. My shock and anger hardened into a lump that nearly choked me. I swung my head around to the king. I’m not sure what I expected to see there.

  I certainly didn’t expect to find the former Queen smirking at me, a triumphant expression on her thin, pale face. She had been watching me the whole time.

  The serving girl with the goblin fruit moved on, replaced by other servants, with less dangerous offerings. It would have been an insult to refuse to eat, and so I allowed one of them to place a slice of quiche and a pile of potatoes on my plate—the simplest things on offer, even if the quiche was studded with flecks of rosemary and marbled with veins of rich white cheese, even if the potatoes had been cooked in what smelled like lamb fat and garlic. My own glass was filled with orange juice, pale and bright and obviously untainted by goblin fruit. I sprinkled a pinch of Walther’s powder over the plate, and added another to my glass, before handing the vial to Tybalt.

  The old Queen was watching me like a hawk this entire time. As soon as the vial left my hand, she pounced, demanding, “Is the food not refined enough to your liking, Sir Daye? Shall we have the chefs whipped for disappointing you?”

  “Far from it,” I said, raising my head. My voice was calm, but my eyes screamed hatred at the woman on the dais, the woman who had nearly destroyed me so many times. She just wouldn’t stop. “I grew up in the mortal world, you see, and so my palette is less refined than it might be. A little bit of salt goes a long way toward keeping me from completely embarrassing myself. My alchemist mixes it for me personally.” Which meant I was admitting the “salt” was a protection against poisoning, and daring Rhys to say anything about it.

  He didn’t. “What of your companion, the King?” King Rhys’ tone was milder than the old Queen’s; he was still amused by what he saw as my useless antics, while she recognized me for the threat I had become. I had to give her that, at least: maybe it had taken me having her deposed, but at least she’d learned to be afraid of me. “He seems bent on adding the same seasoning to his food. It’s difficult not to view this as an insult to my kitchens—unless you’d prefer it be viewed as a failure on their part.”

  “I simply tailor my tastes to the tastes of my betrothed, because I have to eat her cooking,” said Tybalt, tone mild and faintly resigned, like being forced to let me feed him was the worst of all possible fates. Some of the surrounding nobles chuckled.

  I punched him lightly in the arm, doing my best to look offended, when all I really felt was relief that he’d followed my lead. More of the nobles laughed, more openly now. Even Rhys smiled, although the expression remained calculating enough to make my stomach churn.

  “The course of true love never did run smooth,” he said. “I shall have to prepare a special banquet just for you, that we might sit together as Kings and speak of kingly things without the needs of our domestic lives intruding upon our statures.”

  Then, just in case that didn’t make his point clearly enough, he turned, took the old Queen’s hand, and pressed a kiss just above her knuckles.

  Bile rose in my stomach, followed quickly by cold, chilling rage. This was all a ploy, a play they were performing with themselves cast in the leading roles. The unfairly dethroned Queen goes to her beloved, the ruler of a neighboring kingdom, who was unable to be with her because it would have been a conflict of interests. Now he was willing to sacrifice his happiness all over again, for the sake of putting her back in her rightful place. It was an elegant, epic love story, worthy of any stage, and that didn’t change the fact that the whole thing was bullshit. They were trying to sell a fairy tale. I wasn’t buying.

  “Please, eat,” said Rhys, releasing the false Queen’s hand. “There will be time enough for politics later, when you’re ready.”

  Nice. He was putting the weakness back on us, implying that our journey from the Mists had left us too exhausted to start doing what we’d come here for. In some ways, he was right. Having more time to learn the lay of the land could only help, and it wasn’t like we had any real secrets—with the false Queen beside him, he could learn basically everything about us without trying. She knew May was a pureblood in changeling’s clothes; she knew Tybalt would die before he’d hurt me again. About the only thing she didn’t know was that Quentin was Crown Prince of the Westlands, and that wasn’t something I was going to bring up for any reason. He needed to be protected from people like her, and the so-called King of Silences.

  The quiche was excellent, sweet and creamy, with just a hint of peppery zing. I barely tasted it as I shoveled food mechanically into my mouth, watching the dais all the while.

  Walther and Quentin were sharing their table with what I took for a variety of lesser nobles. They were dressed mostly in Kingdom colors, and the servants seemed to reach them last, resulting in half empty platters and pitchers that sometimes ran dry while a drink was being poured. I saw Walther add a pinch of powder to Quentin’s food, and relaxed marginally. My squire was as safe in this environment as he could possibly have been.

  That was more than I could say about the rest of us. I could feel the eyes of the surrounding people on me as I ate. They were watching my motions, taking my measure. I was reaching for my orange juice when a passerby “accidentally” tripped, spilling his own drink all over the front of my gown. The fabric immediately turned a deep, bruised purple, and the smell of goblin fruit struck me like a physical blow, nearly knocking me off the bench.

  Mocking laughter rose from the nobles around us. I barely noticed. I was too busy staring at the stain spreading across my chest, remembering the sweet dreams the fruit had given me the last time I’d been tricked into tasting it. I was less human now than I’d been then. It would be less able to destroy me. But “less” didn’t mean “not at all,” and I was all too aware of what would happen if even a drop made its way into my mouth.

  Curing myself of goblin fruit addiction once had required iron poisoning, the blood of a Firstborn, and the sacrifice of more of my dwindling humanity. Not much more—I was still mostly what I had been—but I knew, even as I reeled, that getting clean a second time might require everything I had left.

  Tybalt’s hands were on my shoulders, half pulling and half lifting me out of my seat. I staggered to my feet, the laughter of the nobles still following me. There was a scrape from the dais as King Rhys stood, his own laughter joining the crowd.

  “Oh, my!” he said, clapping his hands. “Sir Daye, I’m terribly sorry and embarrassed by this accident! It’s such a pity that anyone can be clumsy, isn’t it? I assure you, there was no malice intended, and my laundry will be able to restore your . . . lovely . . . gown to its original condition.”

  I stared at him, too stricken to speak.

  He smiled. It was a terrible thing to see. “You look distressed, milady. Oh, that’s right—you have human blood in your veins, don’t you? Such close exposure to goblin fruit must sit poorly with your mortal heritage. How foolish of me to have even allowed it at the table. But you must understand that my Court is a pureblood holding, and I have such trouble denying my people the little pleasures that make our exile in these shallow lands more bearable.”

  For once in my life, I couldn’t find any words. I couldn’t even open my mouth. The smell of the goblin fruit was so str
ong, and so distracting, that if I breathed too deeply, I didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Quentin and Walther were suddenly there, standing behind me and lending what strength they could to the situation. Tybalt kept his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Please excuse us. My lady has learned that I do not care for messes, and has begun taking great pains to keep herself from such mortifying social situations. We will return after she has been restored to her pristine state, and will be glad to begin the conversations for which we came here in the first place.”

  “Indeed,” said Rhys. “The sooner begun, the sooner done, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tybalt didn’t answer, but his pupils narrowed, telegraphing his displeasure. He offered the King of Silences a short, stiff bow, pulling me with him, so that we had both performed the absolute minimum that would be acceptable before leaving the presence of a reigning monarch. Then he turned, pushing me in front of him as I stumbled dazedly toward the door.

  “I won’t tell you to take a deep breath; that might harm you more than what’s to come,” he murmured, lips close to my ear. “Simply trust me, and this will all be over soon.”

  I nodded mutely, keeping my lips pressed into a hard line and trying to minimize the breaths I took through my nose. The doors swung open as we approached them, forming a shadow in the space where the hinges bent. Tybalt seized the opportunity as soon as it presented itself, swinging me up into his arms and plunging us both down into darkness.

  The Shadow Roads were airless, black, and cold. They were also scentless, since taking a breath would have frozen my lungs solid in less time than it took to finish the inhale. I leaned against Tybalt, curling into as tight a ball as I could manage in order to reduce the drag. I could feel him tensing as he ran, covering the distance between the dining hall and our room in less than a third of the time it would have taken by more normal channels.

  My lungs were aching when we plunged out of the dark and back into the startlingly bright light of our guest chambers. Tybalt all but threw me against the wall, where I fumbled for the lacings on my gown with half frozen fingers. He cut the process short by raking his claws down the ties, slicing them neatly in half. I immediately yanked the gown over my head, panting slightly as I leaned there in strapless bra and underpants.

  The purple stain of the goblin fruit was on the bra, too, although it wasn’t as dark; that, and the handy flash-freeze effect of our trip through the Shadow Roads, allowed me to remove it without ripping the clasps. I flung it on the pile of fabric before collapsing backward on the bed, staring at the canopy.

  “Are you well?” asked Tybalt.

  “As well as can be expected,” I replied.

  “Then I will see to this, and return.” He gathered my discarded clothing from the floor, carrying it with him as he walked into another shadow on the far side of the room. That alone told me how concerned he’d been, even if I had somehow managed to overlook everything else that had happened since the glass fell. Normally, he would never have left me by myself.

  Not that I was completely by myself. I rolled off the bed and walked to Quentin’s door, feeling my legs shake with every step I took. I should probably have stopped to grab a shirt out of the wardrobe, but I felt shocky and unsure: I needed reassurance. So I banged my knuckles against the doorframe and waited, counting the seconds until the door opened and May appeared, her short hair spiky and disheveled. Her white linen nightshirt fell to her knees in a shapeless line, making her look younger than she was.

  She blinked at me slowly, confusion written in her expression. “You’re not wearing a shirt,” she said, like this was somehow going to surprise me. “Or a bra. Toby, what’s—do I smell goblin fruit?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, sweet Titania, what happened?”

  I laughed unsteadily. “The King of Silences serves goblin fruit juice with lunch. One of his cronies spilled it on me. I don’t . . . I can’t . . . I need to wash myself. Can you please come with me?”

  I didn’t need to explain why, or detail my fears: that I would wipe the stickiness off my skin and start drinking the bathwater, looking for the faintest echo of the dreams the goblin fruit could bring. I’d managed to do the unthinkable when I beat the addiction, but that didn’t mean I was cured—I was still a changeling, and it would always be more tempting than anything the mortal world had to offer. It just meant that I’d survived a brush with something that should have destroyed me, and while survival may have made me stronger, it had also left its scars.

  “Of course,” said May, putting an arm around my shoulder and steering me across the room toward what I presumed was the door to the bathroom. “Just let me grab something for you to wear, all right? I think Quentin would drop dead on the spot if he realized you had nipples under there.”

  My laughter was a little less strained this time, although it still had a tight, flat edge to it that I didn’t like. “I’m pretty sure he knows I’m a girl by this point, May.”

  “I don’t know. He’s your squire, and you’re pretty good with the willful ignorance. He’s learning from the best, is all I’m saying.” She paused as we passed the wardrobe, taking her arm away long enough to open it and pull out a clean blouse, bra, and panties. “Let’s at least try not to scandalize the poor boy. He’s having a hard enough time figuring out what he wants without you flashing your boobies all over the place.”

  She was trying hard to cheer me up. I recognized that, even as part of me balked at her needing to. She had spent the day trying to gather information and discovering just how messed-up Silences really was; she had barely slept. She deserved better than to have me clinging to her arm like some fainting heroine in a bad gothic romance . . . but I didn’t let go, and when she started for the bathroom, I let her lead the way without fighting. It was easier.

  I needed a little easy.

  The bathroom was large enough to contain an old-fashioned copper bathtub, complete with clawed feet that dug into the tiled floor like they were declaring war on the plumbing. There was plumbing, which was a bit of a relief: I’d been half afraid we were going to need to fetch buckets or boil our own water. Instead, May turned on the taps, beginning to fill the tub with steaming water.

  “I brought bubble bath, on the assumption that you were going to need to scrub blood off yourself at some point; I guess this is a similar situation,” she said, indicating a bunch of bottles arranged on the sill of the room’s single window. The glass was cloudy with particulates, but judging by the green on the other side, it looked out on a garden of some sort. We were on the second floor. Make that “it looked out on the trees growing in the garden.”

  May grabbed two bottles, uncapped them with her thumbs, and sniffed their contents before announcing, “You’re going to be the most perfumed princess at the party,” and dumping a healthy amount of both liquids into the bath. The water promptly foamed up, smelling of peppermint and rosemary.

  I blinked at May. Then, slowly, understanding dawned, and I smiled. She wanted to remove the temptation. With two strong herbs scenting the air, there would be virtually no chance of my smelling the traces of goblin fruit still clinging to my skin.

  She smiled back, even as she was tipping another vial of Walther’s countercharm into the water. Just in case. “Get in the bath. I need to have you dressed again and ready to go before Tybalt gets back.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I stood, stepping out of my shoes, and peeled off my underpants before allowing May to help me into the bathtub. I would have felt weird about that, but the tub was twice as high as the one we had at home, and had clearly been designed for someone with attendants to use. She took her hand away as soon as I was in the water, and leaned over to turn off the taps.

  “There,” she said. “Now clean yourself up, and tell me what happened.”

  “I’m not sure you really want me to,” I said, sinking down so that the bubbles were up to my chin. Then, and only then, I b
egan to speak.

  There wasn’t much to tell, but it took a surprisingly long time to tell it all, especially since May kept asking me to back up and repeat things that she considered important—some of which were seriously odd. She focused less on the goblin fruit juice than she did on the spices in the quiche, for example, and on the seating arrangement of the room.

  When I finished, she looked at me, lips pressed into a hard line, and shook her head. “That’s messed up. The etiquette of the room is all off. He’s playing at classy, and falling way short.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I know it’s messed up. You didn’t see . . . is the chef a pureblood at least?” Anything to let me believe, however temporarily, that Rhys wasn’t making his changeling servants crush the goblin fruit themselves.

  May’s expression killed that hope before it could fully form. “I didn’t see anyone in the kitchen but changelings. If they’re that fond of goblin fruit here, they probably lose one or two a year to addiction. Why should they worry about it? They can always make more.” She made no effort to conceal the bitterness in her tone, and I appreciated that. It was easier to feel like my own bitterness was justified when I wasn’t the only one.

  “The trouble with thinking of living beings as a replaceable commodity is that one day, they may think the same of you,” said Tybalt, in the mild tone he always used when he was angry but trying not to aim it inappropriately. I turned my head to find him standing in the bathroom doorway. His expression softened as he looked at me. “Are you . . . well, my little fish?”

  “I’m sitting in a tub full of water without having a panic attack about it, so I think I’m doing basically okay,” I said. “Where are Walther and Quentin?”

  “Walking back with diplomatic slowness,” said Tybalt. “Both of them knew you would need to clean yourself, and I think neither wished to offer offense by walking in when you were unprepared.”