A Red-Rose Chain

by Seanan McGuire

  When I finished, there was a moment of silence. Then Quentin asked, “Why did they come for me and May? We weren’t doing anything.”

  “No, but as my squire, you’re the best hostage against my good behavior. And May looks like my changeling sister. I’ve been careful not to say that she wasn’t, although the false Queen knows, so we can’t discount the possibility that Rhys does as well. Either way, she’s clearly family, which makes her a good hostage, too.”

  “And as your family, I command you to give me your dress,” said May, sliding off the bed and holding out her hand.

  I blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “You said Rhys wanted to take you apart. Have you noticed that he has an army of alchemists, including Walther’s sister, ready to do his bidding? You can’t just go leaving your blood around like it’s not a big deal. Give me your dress. Give me everything that has blood on it.” May continued to hold out her hand. “I’m going to make sure it can’t be used against you.”

  “I can take you to a proper laundry, if you would like, rather than run the risk that Rhys will save and reuse your wash water,” said Tybalt calmly. “We have need to go into Portland regardless.”

  I turned to look at him. “Is that where you went? To Portland?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been making many promises. It was time to see whether they could be kept. The local King has agreed to see us. He has already seen me, you understand, but is interested in meeting the woman who could sway me toward marriage. Apparently, our union will settle some sort of bet.” He wrinkled his nose at the end, like this was so unbelievably crass that he didn’t know where to begin.

  “Fair enough,” I said. I looked down at my blood-soaked bodice and sighed. “I need help getting out of this, and then we can head for Portland. Quentin, Walther, do you want to come with us? I’m not sure I like the idea of you staying here alone.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Quentin.

  “I’m not,” said Walther. The rest of us turned to look at him. He shrugged. “I need to spend more time with Aunt Ceres, and to work on finding that rose. Until I have it, I can’t make any more progress on my counterpotion. I can get to her without having any issues. I know this castle better than the people who currently hold it—I’d be willing to stake my life on it.”

  “You will be,” I said grimly. “If you have any trouble, or if Rhys threatens you in any way, run, all right? None of this is worth it if you get yourself killed.”

  “Yes, Mom,” he said, and smiled. “Now get yourself cleaned up. You look like a crime scene.”

  “That’s how you know I’m feeling like myself,” I said. I walked to the wardrobe, fished out jeans, my leather jacket, and a clean tank top, then started for the bathroom with May close behind me.

  It took us five minutes to undo all the stays and ties holding the dress together. There was a bloodstain on the left cup of my bra, but it wasn’t bad enough to make me want a clean one. I had every confidence that it was going to be joined by more before this trip was through. May took custody of the dress as soon as it was peeled from my body.

  “Wash the blood off your face,” she said, and left me to get dressed.

  The others were waiting when I emerged. May had produced a laundry bag from somewhere, and had it slung over her shoulder. “At least you didn’t get blood in your hair,” she said.

  “I’m not a barbarian,” I said.

  “Barbarians bleed less, because barbarians know that actions have consequences,” she countered. “Maybe you should try being a barbarian.”

  “We’re going to Portland,” I said. “Let’s be hipsters instead.” I turned to Tybalt. “How do you want to do this? Taking three of us through the shadows at once is a lot to ask.”

  “You have asked more of me with less cause, and I do not want the local regency to realize that something is happening,” he said. “We are close to the mortal city, all but overlapping its bounds. You will hold fast, and not let go. I will run as fleetly as I may, and together, we will come through the other side, bent and bowed, but nowhere near to broken.”

  “You’re nervous, too, huh?” I asked, reaching over to put my hand on his shoulder.

  He folded his fingers over it, lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss against my knuckles. “I am in a constant state of what you would term as ‘nervousness,’ and it is most often your fault.”

  “A girl’s got to be good for something.” I turned to look at Walther, who was standing near the door. “Be careful, okay? You know they’re out to get you, and you know Rhys is a bastard. He’ll do whatever he feels he has to do in order to accomplish his goals.”

  Walther smiled slowly. “Lucky for me, I’m as big of a bastard as he is. I just have less reason to show it. Now go. Enjoy Portland. Don’t get yourselves killed.”

  “Right.” I turned back to Tybalt, who was still holding onto me. Quentin stepped up and took my free hand in his, while May took Tybalt’s free hand and held it tightly. Then Tybalt stepped backward, into the shadows cast by the hanging curtains, and out of the world where light and air were possibilities.

  Running along the Shadow Roads with multiple people was never easy. There was too much chance that someone would trip or lose hold, and consequently be lost—possibly forever—in the darkness. Tybalt set the pace and the rest of us did our best to keep up, our lips sealed tight against the airless void and ice crystals forming on our hair and eyelashes with every step that we took. The cold was bad enough that I closed my eyes reflexively, shielding them from the worst of it. As always, I found myself wondering how everyone else was doing, whether the Shadow Roads were kinder to them than they were to me, or whether the opposite was true. It was better than dwelling on the nothingness surrounding us, infinite and empty.

  Then we were falling back into a place where the air was warm, and more importantly, breathable. I lost my grip on Quentin’s hand. I lost my grip on Tybalt’s half a second later. There wasn’t time to worry about it, as my head’s impact with a brick wall followed almost instantly. The ice was knocked from my hair and eyelashes, jarring my eyes open, and I found myself looking at a narrow alleyway. A dumpster stood between us and the street. Tybalt was standing behind May, his hands in her armpits, and her face only a few inches from hitting the wall like mine had. Quentin was on his back on the ground. Fortunately, it either hadn’t been raining recently or the alley had excellent drainage: there was no standing water for him to have landed in. After the day we’d been having, if there had been an available puddle, he would have gone into it.

  The sun was up, and it was early morning, based on the shadows. The Summerlands had been distorting time again. That made me worry about how Rhys was calculating the days. If his knowe burned hours faster than the world outside, our three days could be up before we even knew it.

  “I’m the fiancée. Why am I the one you let risk concussion?” I asked, peeling myself away from the wall and rubbing the back of my head with one hand. It didn’t feel like I had knocked anything loose inside my skull, and my nose hadn’t started bleeding again. There was probably a layer or two of skin remaining on the brick, but that was a small thing. Any scrapes would be healed before we made it to the sidewalk.

  “Because you’re also the one who heals like she’s trying out for the magical Olympics,” said May, pulling away from Tybalt. She retrieved the laundry bag from where it had fallen next to Quentin. “If I’d eaten wall the way you just did, my face would look like roadkill for the next week.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” I said, and offered Quentin my hand. He took it, letting me pull him off the alley floor. “You okay there, kiddo? Didn’t whack your head too hard?”

  “I’m fine,” said Quentin. He raised his hand and whistled a few bars of a sea shanty as he brought it down again. The smell of steel and heather filled the alley as the thin veil of a human disguise settl
ed over him, softening the lines of his face and stealing some of the metallic sheen from his hair. His tunic and trousers also blurred, becoming jeans and a T-shirt advertising a band called Great Big Sea. He looked like any human kid, standing on the border between high school and college, and ready to take on the world.

  My ears itched. I reached up to feel the side of my right ear, and found that it was gently curved—human. “Good work,” I said.

  Quentin smiled. “No problem. Um, I know you’re going to see the local King, so you can dispel it if you need to by clapping your hands twice.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’re learning conditional illusions now? Excellent work. That tutoring with Etienne is really working out.”

  “It’ll go faster once he has access to his own magic again,” said Quentin, cheeks reddening with pleasure.

  “Still. Better than I could do.”

  Everyone knew that illusions were harder for me than they were for Quentin or May. They were predominantly rooted in flower magic, which descends from Titania, although you can accomplish the same things through a slightly different route if you had access to water magic, which descends from Maeve. Lucky me, I didn’t get either, since the Dóchas Sidhe descended solely from Oberon. If you want blood magic, I’m your girl. If you want an illusion cast quickly and well, I’m really not.

  Tybalt—his own face now hidden by a human mask, and the smell of musk and pennyroyal attending him like my favorite cologne—walked over to us and slid one arm around my waist. “Your clothing needs no alteration, as you are always more inclined to dress for the mall than for the presence of Kings.”

  I wrinkled my nose as I turned to give his own altered attire a once-over. He looked good in jeans and a flannel work shirt, but let’s be serious here: this was Tybalt I was talking about. He would have looked good in a burlap sack, a sentiment I have expressed before and will no doubt express again, when the opportunity arises. “See, I find that I spend more time grocery shopping and running for my life than I do making nice with royalty.”

  Tybalt raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t count,” I said.

  “Yeah, because half the time you’re naked when he’s around,” said May, sashaying over to our little cluster. Her face was hidden by a human disguise, but her clothing was still Court finery, making her look out of place and out of time in the dingy little alley. I blinked. She smirked. “This is Portland, honey. They pride themselves on keeping it weird here. I could probably add a pair of bunny ears and a basket full of teddy bears before anyone looked at me twice, and even then, they’d just want to know if I was the Shakespearean Easter Bunny. Trust me, I’ve heard about this town.”

  “If you say so,” I said. “Just please don’t get us in more trouble than we’re already in, okay?”

  “I won’t.” May turned to Tybalt. “Meet here in two hours? That gives me time to get the laundry done and dry, and maybe do a little shopping. I want to find those food trucks they’re always talking about on TV.”

  “I’m going with May,” said Quentin. “Well, I mean, at least until I can find a bus or taxi that will take me to Powell’s.”

  “Powell’s?” I asked blankly.

  “It’s a bookstore so big it takes up an entire city block. They have a rare books room bigger than the Safeway near the house. I’m going to ship things home, don’t worry.”

  I grimaced. “Please. Okay, meet us back here in two hours. That leaves plenty of time for us to change our clothes and get ready for dinner. And be careful, all right? I wouldn’t put it past Rhys to have people out here in the city looking for a chance to get the upper hand. Avoid, I don’t know, empty streets and archery ranges.”

  “Will do,” said May. She slung the laundry bag over her shoulder and started for the mouth of the alley. Quentin followed her. I turned to Tybalt.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “We must walk a short distance, but I assure you, it will be no hardship, for I will be with you,” he said, offering me his arm.

  I laughed as I took it. “Wow. Your ego has grown since we’ve known each other, hasn’t it?”

  “Ah, but, you see, I have wooed and won the woman of my dreams. Admittedly, some of those dreams would be more properly termed ‘nightmares,’ but I don’t believe we get to be that picky when talking about such things.” He led me out of the alley and onto the tree-lined street. I didn’t know Portland well enough to know where we were—I didn’t know Portland at all, really—but he walked without hesitation, and I followed him. Whatever strange methods Cait Sidhe used to mark their holdings for each other, I trusted him to know how to interpret things. “If my ego had not grown, it would surely be a sign that I was no true cat, and you would leave me for another.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I love you, but the cat part has never been the most important thing to me.”

  The corner of Tybalt’s mouth curved upward. “And, truly, that is excellent to know. I was considering becoming a horse, or a stag, or perhaps a dairyman.”

  “You know, if I ever forget that you’re a weirdo, the fact that you class ‘dairyman’ with horse and deer will remind me.”

  “Stag, please,” said Tybalt. He tried to sound wounded. The laughter sort of spoiled the effect. “Do not shame my manhood, I beg of you.”

  “Stag, then,” I said. We turned a corner, starting down a street packed with odd little shops. Half of them had candles in the window. Sobering, I asked, “Tybalt . . . are we doing the right thing? Getting involved, I mean? We could go home and start rallying our allies.”

  “Preventing a war is always the right thing to do,” he said gravely. “War is not a game, for all that some would play it as they would a round of whist. War is a tragedy in motion. Everyone is innocent, and everyone is guilty, and the crows come for their bodies all the same. The only ones who benefit in war are the night-haunts, and even they would rather their feasts came in smaller portion.”

  I thought of May, who had willingly left the night-haunts to become my Fetch, and the way the night-haunts sometimes spoke of death: like it was a waste. They lived because other fae died, and even they understood that living was better. “I just feel like we’re starting to interfere on a level that’s sort of . . . extreme.”

  “But that’s what heroes do.” He stopped in front of a comic book store. There were no candles in this window: only men in tights and women with improbably good, improbably invisible bras, striking heroic poses that seemed much more sincere than my own weary resignation. I didn’t have time to dwell on that, however. Tybalt pulled his arm out of mine, put both hands against the sides of my face, and kissed me.

  No matter how many times I kissed Tybalt, no matter how many situations and places I kissed him in, part of me always marveled at the fact that I was allowed to do it at all. He wasn’t the sort of man who kissed scruffy changelings in tank tops and tennis shoes—and yet somehow, he was exactly that sort of man, because he had kissed me over and over again, with the same delicate amazement that I felt when I kissed him. Like we were getting away with something that should, by all rights, have been forbidden. Like we were winning.

  The taste of pennyroyal and musk on his lips was stronger than usual, thanks to the human disguise he had crafted and was still powering. It overpowered any lingering trace of Quentin’s magic, which was good; I would have been a little unnerved to suddenly have my squire involved in our embrace. Tybalt kissed me slowly and thoroughly, until my ears and cheeks were burning red and felt like they must be hot to the touch.

  I was panting a little when he pulled away, smiling smugly. I glared at him.

  “That was entirely unfair,” I said. “You can kiss me like that, but we’re not going to be able to do anything about it for days.”

  “We have a bed,” he said.

  “And we are not doing anything in it when we’re in the house of a man wh
o wants to collect my bodily fluids for icky alchemical purposes, okay? Nothing’s going to happen, bed-wise, until we get home.”

  Tybalt sighed extravagantly. “You see, even now, you torment me so.” He stepped back, taking my hand in his. There was something purposeful about the gesture, like it was less casual affection and more a statement of ownership. That feeling grew stronger as he turned toward the comic book store and started for the door, pulling me along with him.

  “Tybalt?” I asked, in a low voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you just kiss me to show off for whoever’s inside here?”

  A small, regretful smile touched his lips. “Perhaps,” he said, and opened the door.

  I’ve never been much for comic books. I don’t object to them as a medium, and having two teenage boys effectively living with me has meant getting used to finding them piled on the coffee table, but it’s hard to get too excited about a world where a cheap domino mask is all it takes to hide your secret identity from everyone around you. If it had been that easy for me, my life would have been very different.

  The shop was small, made narrow by the huge racks of comics and graphic novels that took up every inch of wall space below seven feet. Above that, the shelves gave way to posters and to tall, expensive statues, for the person who just has to have a bust of Batman watching their every move. A few racks of action figures and other, odder merchandise stood here and there among the periodicals. I blinked at a display of purses made from superhero-themed fabric. I hadn’t realized there were so many different ways to wear a cape, or so many different styles of bustier that people would consider appropriate to wear into combat.

  Tybalt kept hold of my hand, guiding me past the glass-topped counter where a bored-looking girl was flipping through something about robots. The deeper we got, the stronger the smell of paper became, until we reached the back of the store. A half-open door afforded a glimpse into a small office packed with filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. A trim, silver-haired man sat at the room’s sole desk, typing rapidly.