Late Eclipses od-4

by Seanan McGuire

  Sylvester sighed. “Please don’t strain yourself before I get back,” he said, and turned, walking through a nearby doorway.

  I gave the garden a slow once-over once he was gone. My eyes were still adjusting to the light, but the glare was becoming less painful. I was unsurprised to see the body of the assassin on the path not far away, arrows sticking out of his back. They were fletched in the colors of Shadowed Hills. “He hit anybody else?”

  “Sir Archibald,” Connor reported. “He’s asleep in his quarters.”

  “Shit. I hope they remember to dust him.” There were rose goblins on every surface, watching us with bright, unblinking eyes. “They’re worse than cats,” I muttered.

  “What?” said May.

  “Nothing.” Sylvester came back through the door, carrying a long, cloth-draped mirror. I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Where’s my mother?”

  “She left,” he said, as he moved to prop the mirror against the fountain.

  “Of course she did.” That was just like Amandine. She’d show up when I was dying, but she couldn’t stay to see me live. “How long did you know? Don’t say you didn’t. All that ‘Amandine this’ and ‘Amandine that’—you knew. And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Know what?” asked Connor. “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Well, Sylvester? You want to answer the man?”

  He looked away.

  “Right,” I snarled, pulling myself out of Connor’s hands and wobbling over to the fountain. I yanked the fabric off the mirror, throwing it unceremoniously to the side.

  And then I stopped, unable to make myself move. Even knowing what I was going to see did nothing to prepare me for actually seeing it. “Oh,” I said, finally. “Tybalt was right.”

  Almost a year ago, Tybalt followed me to the County of Tamed Lightning, where he helped me find a killer and saw me raise the dead. He got strange after that, and avoided me for months while he went looking for something. We returned to what passed for our normal relationship once he found what he’d been looking for. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. He said I had to find it for myself, because I wouldn’t believe it coming from him.

  He was right. Maybe I’m weird, but if he’d said, “By the way, you’re not Daoine Sidhe, because Daoine Sidhe don’t work the way you do,” I would have laughed him out of the room.

  Well, I wasn’t laughing now. And I wasn’t Daoine Sidhe.

  The woman in the mirror was pale with exhaustion, and her eyes were a gray almost pale enough to be white. Her stick-straight hair was ashy brown shot through with streaks of gold. Even her features were finer than I expected. I could still see my father in the cant of her chin, but he was blurred and half-hidden. She’d been—I’d been—tilted further from human. What Amandine did changed everything. I knew that, even as I closed my eyes and gathered my magic around me, reaching inward as I tried to do something I never felt the need to do before, and measured my own heritage.

  The smell of copper rose hot as I asked my blood, What am I? Its answer was incomprehensible, the taste/ sound/feeling of a race I didn’t recognize and had never encountered before. Whatever Amandine and I were, we didn’t even share a Firstborn with the Daoine Sidhe. I dug deeper, looking for a clearer picture, and my eyes snapped open, meeting the shocked stare of my reflection.

  There were subtle watermarks scattered all through me, marks I somehow knew showed the places where the balance of my blood had changed. I’d never been able to see them before. Now, they were all too visible. The freshest was less than an hour old; the one before it matched the night I touched the hope chest. There were other marks before those; all short, brusque changes that read almost like a tug-of-war.

  Amandine stopped voluntarily touching me after I made my Changeling’s Choice. I used to think it was because she blamed me for taking her away from my father. That was never the reason. She just couldn’t risk it around people who’d see what she was doing to me. I looked at the watermarks in my blood and suddenly being the weak daughter of the most powerful blood-worker in Faerie actually started making sense.

  May was behind me when I opened my eyes. She had no human blood—as a Fetch, she mimicked my changeling traits without sharing them—but her reflection looked more human than mine did. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Amandine saved you,” she said. “She came out of that fog she lives in and saved you. Please don’t hate her for doing it.”

  I ignored her, watching my lips in the mirror as I asked, “Sylvester? How long?” I wanted to kick and scream and throw things, but I knew that wouldn’t achieve anything. So I waited for his answer, and I watched my reflection speak.

  “Always.” Sylvester laughed bitterly. “I’m Daoine Sidhe, remember?”

  I turned to face him. “And I’m not.”

  Connor gaped at me. Sylvester just shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re what everyone’s always told you that you were.” His smile was strained. “You’re Amandine’s daughter.”

  “I’m still a changeling. I can feel my mortality. It’s thinner, but it’s there.” I kept my eyes on Sylvester’s, challenging him to look away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because your mother asked me not to, and I couldn’t deny her.” His smile died. “I never dreamed that it would take her this long.”

  “Yeah, well.” I glared at him. It didn’t help. I’d never felt so betrayed. Not by Devin, not by Amandine, not by anyone. Sylvester was the father I’d never been allowed to have. He was the one man who wasn’t supposed to lie to me. “That’s Amandine for you. Always taking the long way around.”

  “She came when you needed her,” said May. “Doesn’t that count for something? She loves you.” Her tone was wistful. She had my memories; she remembered being Amandine’s daughter, but she was still a Fetch. She’d never had a mother.

  My mother loved me. It was an interesting notion, and almost enough to take my mind off what she’d done. It was nowhere near enough to blunt the sting of what Sylvester had done. “Did she say anything else?” I asked.

  “She said beware the Lady of the Lake, because she’s never forgiven you your story, but to be more afraid by far of Morgane,” said Connor. I gave him a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I don’t know what that means. Amandine’s a little weird, even when she’s being sane. Are you really not Daoine Sidhe?”

  “Guess not.” I raked my hair back again, wincing as my hand hit my ear. This was going to take some getting used to.

  May’s sudden smile was vibrant enough to make me feel selfish for my panic. “I’m not your Fetch anymore, and I’m still here.”

  I matched her smile with a more subdued smile of my own. “I’m so glad.”

  Connor cleared his throat. “Now can you stop dying on us?”

  “I’ll do my best. No promises.” I glanced at Sylvester. “I’m not done being angry with you, but this isn’t the time. Did May tell you what we found?”

  “I got a little distracted, boss,” May said, sounding sheepish.

  Sylvester looked between us. “What’s going on?”

  “We were here because we had some ideas about what happened to Luna,” I said. “We were at the bottom of the hill when Oleander called to taunt me.”

  “May told us that much,” he said, nodding. “But Luna?”

  “She wasn’t poisoned; that’s why Jin can’t find anything wrong with her. It’s the roses that are sick. Someone’s been salting the earth around them.”

  Sylvester’s eyes narrowed. “And as the roses die … ”

  “So does she. Have you noticed the rose goblins acting strangely?”

  “I haven’t noticed much,” he admitted, glancing at the goblins clustered around his feet. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  “I have,” said Connor. “They got sick the same time Luna did. Some of the smaller ones have died. I thought it was because she was sick.”

  “So did I, but we were coming at things from the wrong direction. If we
cure the roses, we cure her. Walther cured the goblins by turning the salt in their blood into gypsum. He may be able to help with the soil, once he’s had a little more time.”

  “I see,” said Sylvester. His smile was less vibrant than May’s, but just as alive, and twice as relieved. I felt a pang of guilt over taking time to panic before getting down to business; they needed me to be sane, and I hadn’t been doing it.

  Then again, I just came back from the dead, and learned that the one person I’d trusted more than anyone had been lying to me for my entire life. Maybe I needed to cut myself a little slack. “We can save her,” I said.

  “I hope so,” said Sylvester. “And—”

  I never learned what he was going to say next. The gate connecting the Ducal chambers to the rest of the knowe banged open, and Dugan strode into the garden at the head of a troop of guards in the Queen’s colors. Raysel and Manuel were right behind. Raysel looked gleeful; Manuel looked smug. Neither expression was very comforting.

  May whirled to face her, eyes wide and angry. Sylvester’s turn was slower, and more dangerous; there was a cold fury in the way he was holding himself, and I knew that his fuse wouldn’t burn for long.

  Dugan focused on May, ignoring me completely. “October Daye, you have been charged—”

  Oh, oak and ash. I looked like a stranger to anyone who wasn’t there when Amandine shifted the balance of my blood, while May looked like, well, me. I moved to put myself between her and the guards, ignoring Connor’s attempt to grab my wrist and stop me. “I think you’ve got the wrong girl,” I said, projecting as much false bravado as I could manage. “Unless you came here to harass my Fetch?”

  Dugan hesitated. “October Daye?”

  “The same.”

  He hesitated a moment more. Then, slowly, he smiled. “October Daye, you have been charged with the murder of the Undine known as Lily, and the attempted murder of Luna Torquill, Duchess of Shadowed Hills. You are under arrest by direct order of the Queen of the Mists. I suggest you come quietly.”

  “This is madness!” snapped Sylvester. “Sir Daye has been injured. I won’t allow—”

  “Don’t.” I put my hand on his arm. “It won’t do any good. You know what to do. Call Walther—May knows where he is—and he’ll help you.”

  “Are you quite done?” Raysel asked. “You’re being arrested, not taking a tour.”

  I looked at her coldly. “Raysel, you told me yourself that your father wasn’t my liege anymore. I don’t have to obey his wishes, spoken or unspoken, and so I can finally say this: go drown yourself, you self-righteous little bitch.”

  She stared at me, cheeks reddening, before turning on her heels and storming out of the room. Manuel gave me a venomous look and followed.

  I turned back to Dugan. “Well? Weren’t you going to arrest me now?”

  He motioned two of the guards forward. One grabbed my hands and yanked them behind me. The other snapped iron manacles around my wrists, making my skin crawl. “This isn’t necessary,” I said. “I’m not fighting you.”

  “For once in your life, be silent,” said Dugan, with no real rancor in his tone.

  I looked at him blandly, trying to pretend the iron wasn’t already starting to burn. The second guard removed my knives from around my waist. “What’s your full name?”

  “Dugan Harrow of Deep Mists,” he said. The answer was automatic; like it or not, changeling or not, I outranked him. Eyes narrowing, he asked, “Why?”

  “Because, Dugan Harrow of Deep Mists, I’m going to remember you. I’m going to remember this. And you’re going to be sorry.” One of the guards shoved me between the shoulders, catching me squarely on one of the punctures left by the elf-shot. I staggered, biting my lip to keep from crying out, and let them push me toward the gate.

  I only glanced back once as they forced me out of the room. Connor was rigid with anger as he stared after us, hands balled into useless fists. May was sobbing, slumped against Sylvester, who watching us go with a bleak, calculating anger in his eyes. If Luna lived and I didn’t, the Queen might find herself facing insurrection from a quarter she never bargained for.

  The gate closed behind us, and the guards led me away.

  TWENTY-SIX

  HAVING MY HANDS MANACLED BEHIND ME added a new, nerve-racking dimension to the trip along the beach leading to the Queen’s knowe. The guards yanked me upright every time I started to fall, pulling so hard they wrenched my arms and rattled my teeth. For some reason, I wasn’t particularly grateful. The iron in the manacles disrupted and dissolved my magic, leaving me dizzy and making it impossible for me to spin an illusion. I threw up twice before we even reached the beach. Amandine saved my life, but she also made me more vulnerable to the touch of iron. Nice trade, Mom.

  The don’t-look-here Dugan had thrown over our group was itchy and foreign-feeling, but it hid us from the mortal world, and that was what mattered. There’d be no tourist providing a last-minute save for me. Not this time.

  We somehow made it over the rocks without anyone toppling into the Pacific. I tried to stop long enough to catch my breath, and one of the guards shoved me forward. The third stone in as many minutes turned under my foot, nearly sending me tumbling. “Be a little more careful, asshole,” I snapped. I was already soaked to the knees. I didn’t want to get any wetter.

  Dugan laughed, pushing me into the cave ahead of us. The iron had me too dizzy to catch myself. I dropped to my knees before pitching face-first into the icy water.

  “I’m not that worried about you remembering me,” he said. More loudly, he added, “Get her up. We’re late as it is.”

  Hands grabbed my shoulders, hauling me to my feet. The effects of the iron were getting worse. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go on, but I wasn’t going to give Dugan the satisfaction of knowing that. I shivered, asking, “Could you calm down? The Queen’s going to be pissed if you kill me.”

  “Why should she care, murderess? You’ve broken Oberon’s law one time too many. You’re finally going to burn for it.” He shoved me again. This time I didn’t even hit my knees before falling straight into the water. I rolled to my side, barely managing to lift my face from the water before I drowned. The guards pulled me up. I hung limply in their hands, choking and gasping as they half-shoved, half-supported me the rest of the way down the tunnel.

  Dugan was right. I broke Oberon’s law when I killed Blind Michael, and the Queen could sentence me for that even if I’d done nothing else wrong. The Queen cleared her debt to me by giving me Goldengreen, technically claiming my fealty at the same time. That meant she could take me from Sylvester’s lands without his consent. I’m not a conspiracy theorist—there’s usually a nice, normal, supernatural explanation for whatever’s going on—but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been set up. The only question was just how high up the conspiracy actually went.

  Dugan gave me a final shove as the guards released me, pushing me through the cave wall and into the Queen’s knowe. I staggered to a stop, barely managing to stay upright as my waterlogged shoes slipped on the marble floor of the audience chamber. Shaking my hair out of my eyes, I gaped at the crowd. It looked like everyone in the Kingdom who wasn’t at Shadowed Hills when I was arrested had come to see this farce of a trial.

  Mitch and Stacy stood at the edge of the crowd, hands clasped tightly together. I was relieved to see that they’d left the kids at home. Tybalt wasn’t far from them. He looked absolutely livid. His eyes narrowed as we entered the room, gaze swinging around to focus on the center of Dugan’s don’t-look-here. He might not see us perfectly, but he knew where we were.

  Dugan planted his hands on my shoulders, shoving me forward and ripping away the don’t-look-here at the same time. A gasp ran through the crowd. I could understand the reasons: I was wet, muddy, and bloodstained. Not the sort of thing one normally sees at Court, even at a murder trial.

  Stacy clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes going wide. Even Tybalt was staring at me—Tybalt, wh
o’s seen me in much worse shape. I met his eyes, bewildered. He mouthed a single word: “When?”

  I winced, two hot tears escaping as realization hit me. Everyone who knew me knew that I was a half-blood. The changes Amandine made to save me were too strange to be natural, and unnatural enough to be scary. They sure as hell scared me, and I’d had the time to start getting used to them.

  The guards nudged me into the open space in front of the Queen’s empty throne. Dugan pointed to the floor. “Kneel.”

  I looked at him. I looked at the room. I made my choice. “No.”

  “Kneel. You won’t like what happens if you don’t.” He was starting to look uneasy. I guess he expected a less mixed crowd when he brought me to “justice.”

  Looking at his handsome, weasely face, all I felt was tired. “I won’t kneel for you.” My tone was light, even reasonable, if you ignored who I was talking to.

  “In that case, you can kneel for me,” said the Queen.

  I looked up.

  She was seated on her throne, regal and calm, like she’d been there for hours. She smiled as our eyes met, expression filled with hot satisfaction. Her appearance had changed again, moving from “punk” to “perfection.” Her black-and-white hair was styled in an elegant bob and crowned with a circlet of braided platinum; her fishnets and miniskirt were gone, replaced by a gown made of silver mist. She looked like the pinnacle of glamour, while I looked like something just shy of a natural disaster. I doubted that was an accident, either.

  “Your Highness.” I inclined my head. “Good to see you again.”

  “Is that so?” She pursed her lips. “My man told you to kneel, Countess Daye. Now kneel.”

  The power of the Queen’s Banshee blood made the command impossible to resist. I hit the marble on my knees before I could even try to resist. The compulsion kept pushing until I bowed my head, supplicating myself before her.

  “That’s better,” she murmured. Raising her voice, she said, “We are gathered to witness the trial and sentencing of October Daye, regarding the deaths of Katai Suiyou of the Tea Gardens and Blind Michael, Firstborn son of Oberon and Maeve. She is also charged with the poisoning of Duchess Luna Torquill of Shadowed Hills, with the understanding this crime will only bear sentence of death if the injured dies. October Daye, how do you plead?”