Impostor Syndrome

by Mishell Baker

  She was not wearing her human facade, and Claybriar had to catch me again to keep me from crashing to my knees.

  Draped in sheer, snowy silks and glowing as though lit from within, the golden, voluptuous, diamond-eyed queen beckoned us forward with one of her four arms. Two of the other arms were stroking the gryphon, who watched me through fierce, slitted yellow eyes. The remaining arm was holding the scepter. Although her golden face and breasts were as smooth as a human’s, her lower half and the distal ends of her arms were covered with honey-colored, satiny fur. The soft, multi-textured hourglass of her body was the quintessence of sensual opulence; I wanted to dissolve into it and disappear.

  Her attention was all for Claybriar, but he refused to speak; he only cast his eyes down to the rose-marbled floor.

  Caryl leaned over to whisper to me. “You will have to make the blood sacrifice.” I didn’t even remember what she was talking about, and yet I docilely extended my arm to one of the sidhe maidservants as she approached me with a half-filled cup of what looked like white wine. She pierced my wrist with a thumb claw, which my vague mind did register as unsanitary, but no sooner had three drops of my blood bloomed like red roses in the goblet’s depths than the servant murmured a few words in the Seelie tongue. There was a sudden scent like crushed leaves, and my wound closed without a trace. I watched the servant’s dragonfly wings as she moved away to the queen’s side.

  Dawnrowan took the cup and drained it avidly to the dregs, each swallow rippling along the perfect curve of her throat. I glanced at Claybriar, but his eyes were still on the floor.

  “So,” the queen said, a low, coaxing sound like the cry of a mourning dove. She handed the cup back to her maidservant. “You arrive.”

  “Thank you for receiving us, Queen Dawnrowan,” I said. “You know me, and you’ve met Marchioness Caryl Vallo and, of course, Claybriar.” I left off the title, to appease her. “With us is Baroness Alondra Serrano, here searching for her Echo.”

  She barely glanced at “Alondra,” instead watching the servant return to her place near the dais. She dismissed both servants with a gesture, then turned her glittering gaze to me as they headed for the double doors through which we’d entered.

  “You are willing to reconsider my offer,” she said to me. “Why?”

  “King Winterglass refuses to negotiate with us,” I said, rattling off my prepared speech even as I stared uneasily at the gryphon. Having a giant, unpredictable monster in the room had really not figured into my plan. “Without a complete fey court on our side,” I went on, “we have no way of removing Dame Belinda from power. We are ready to do whatever it takes to earn the allegiance of your entire Court.”

  She inclined her head graciously. “Then please allow me to introduce you to Arrowmorn, future King of the Seelie.”

  The great double doors boomed closed, and I turned toward them, but it had only been the servants leaving. Belatedly I realized what Dawnrowan had meant and turned back to her in astonishment. She helpfully gestured with her scepter toward the massive beast reclining at her side.

  I stared at the gryphon. He blinked at me.

  “You want to replace Claybriar with—him.” I’d stopped myself just short of saying with that.

  “Regal, isn’t he?” Dawnrowan gave his head a scratch. “Unusual, perhaps, but the Third Accord hinges upon my sharing my rule with a commoner, so it may as well be one who can fly.”

  “Right,” I said, trying to remember that I was supposed to be amenable to this. At least until I could figure out how the hell to get that thing out of the room. “Can he—can Arrowmorn understand us? Can he speak?”

  “He does not have the use of words,” said Dawnrowan, “but I can translate for him.”

  “How convenient,” broke in Claybriar bitterly. “A king who can’t give any orders except through you.”

  “Claybriar, what did I say?” I hissed at him.

  But Queen Dawnrowan had already turned to Claybriar, magnificent in her outrage. “On your knees, faun!” she cried, pointing her scepter at him.

  Claybriar, still standing, made a great show of looking down at himself, then back up. “Whoops,” he said. “Looks like I’m still king for the moment.”

  Queen Dawnrowan rose from her throne, eyes flashing, and the gryphon rose too. Oh Jesus he was big. He spread his wings menacingly; the shadow of them was like a lake of ink on the dais.

  “Ob-obviously,” Caryl interrupted, stepping forward, “we will need to give the commoners time t-to shift their support to the proper candidate.”

  “Proper?” said Claybriar, his face going red. “You expect me to stand here and— No. You know what? No.” He turned to me. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t listen to my own friends talk about me this way. Fuck this.”

  I grabbed him by the arm. He turned to me, his gaze full of dark wrath, but his fingers were gentle as they tried to pry my hand loose.

  “Calm down!” I barked at him.

  He stood still, eyes startled.

  I turned to Queen Dawnrowan, tried to look exasperated. “Look,” I said, “we’re never going to have a civilized discussion about the future so long as these two . . . men are in here posturing at each other. So let’s send them out and let those of us who are calmer finish working out the details.”

  Of course the queen was the least calm of anyone, but she didn’t want to admit that, and probably liked that I didn’t seem to notice.

  “Arrowmorn, Claybriar, wait outside with the guards,” she said. They both moved to obey, the gryphon because he had no choice, and Claybriar, I could only assume, because he trusted me. He did give me a hell of a puppy-dog look over his shoulder, though.

  It was a risk. I had counted on his being there in the room to help me if things got too dangerous, but things were ten times as dangerous with a giant eagle-monster in the room, so this was as good an arrangement as I was going to get.

  Once the doors had closed solidly behind the two men, I turned back to Dawnrowan, who was seated again on her throne, though without her previous air of insouciance.

  “Their kind are not made for diplomacy,” she said with a weary sigh.

  Apparently my kind wasn’t either, to judge by the sudden urge I had to put a fist through the back of her head. I gritted my teeth and smiled. “He was a better champion than he is a king, huh?” I said.

  “Millie,” Elliott said, interrupting me on cue in Alondra’s timid voice just as Dawnrowan had begun to look affronted. “I’m so sorry to intrude, but I think . . . I think it might be her.”

  “What?” I said, feigning surprise inexpertly. I didn’t worry about it too much with Dawnrowan; she’d never shown the faintest sign of reading my cues. “Might be who? You don’t mean the queen?”

  Elliott nodded, giving me a doe-eyed look. Boy, he’d really been practicing Alondra’s moves, hadn’t he?

  “Well—wow,” I said. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but . . . as I said before, this is Baroness Alondra Serrano, from New York. We brought her with us because we had reason to believe that her Echo was someone powerful here in Daystrike. Would you be so kind as to indulge her? Let her see if it might be you?”

  “Me?” Suddenly all of Dawnrowan’s offense and irritation melted away, leaving only a childlike wonder. “You believe I might be her Echo?”

  Well, I thought. Now we know what to get the girl who has everything.

  “If Your Majesty will permit me,” Elliott said with becoming shyness, “I could take your hand, and I would know.” As he spoke, he shifted the spell he’d been casting to make the queen pay him no mind and made her oblivious to me, instead.

  Elliott and I approached the queen at the same time. The guardian spirit must already have found this alarming and flashed it to the guards, because I saw the doors begin to swing open. Elliott quickened the facade’s pace, pulling off his glove. The queen’s eyes flew wide as the song of iron hit her from both sides, and then Elliott seized her bare wrist. Between the pa
in and the enchantment, she hardly even noticed as I snatched the scepter from her hand and ran.

  33

  This daring theft looked a little bit stupider than I’d hoped it would, as I was now running directly toward two guards and a huge, angry gryphon. Please, Caryl and Elliott, be fast, I prayed.

  I heard Caryl reciting the grim words of an Unseelie curse. Fake, since it was actually Elliott silently weaving the spell, but who in that room besides our team would know the difference?

  Elliott had thoroughly prepared me for the psychic enchantment he intended to cast on me, but all the same I didn’t have to feign horror when the scepter in my hand turned into a writhing, hissing snake. I hurled that thing at the floor and let out a yell, coming to such a sudden stop that I overbalanced slightly and had to careen into Silverwind just to keep from falling down.

  The large sidhe grabbed me roughly, turning me and pinning my arms, my backpack crushing against his chest. He must have been briefed on the meaning of my suit, because he was careful not to touch anything uncovered. If I’d really wanted to fight, I could have just head-butted him in the throat, but I’d done more than enough already.

  Meanwhile Greyfall stooped to carefully retrieve the royal scepter from the floor. He was a Seelie fey, but since he was male, the scepter didn’t give him any particular powers during the brief time it took him to reach the shell-shocked queen. He knelt to present it to her, and she seized it eagerly with two of her four hands.

  “What were you thinking?” Caryl cried at fake Alondra as loudly as she was able in her low, hoarse voice. Her acting wasn’t great, but she was stressed out and scared enough that she did at least sound genuinely shaky.

  “Millie said she could get past the guards!” Elliott/Alondra whined in protest. “I was only following her orders!”

  “You assaulted the queen!” Caryl persisted. Just in case for some reason the guards hadn’t seen that bit.

  “Come with us quietly,” said Greyfall, approaching Elliott, “and we will not harm you.”

  “She has iron in her!” the queen cried breathlessly. “Just like the other! Be cautious.”

  “Don’t you dare attempt to fight the guards,” said Caryl in a genuinely threatening tone, “or I shall execute you myself. Your Majesty, please forgive me. If I had known the baronesses had lost their minds, I would never have brought them into your presence.”

  “Your assistance in apprehending them is appreciated, Your Ladyship,” said the queen. At least that part of the plan had worked, I reassured myself in an attempt to keep from panicking as Silverwind manhandled me out the doors and down the long staircase. The low resistance on my prosthetic knee made it extremely difficult for me to manage the steps; more than once I almost lurched out of Silverwind’s grasp before he adjusted his grip to better support me.

  “Where are you taking us?” I said to Greyfall once he caught up, dragging Elliott. “Will there be a trial? What’s happening?” This wasn’t how I’d really behaved when under arrest, but they had no way of knowing that, and the experience was too recent for me to comfortably mine it for verisimilitude.

  “Marchioness Vallo will continue discussions with the queen,” said Greyfall with admirable restraint as he muscled Elliott down the long hallway and back out into the sunlight, onto the sepals that jutted out into the cold, minty sky. “You will remain in prison below until your fates are decided.”

  The steel-blue guard I’d noticed on the way in stepped into our path. “Was King Claybriar involved in this?” she demanded of me.

  Another sidhe calling my Echo “King,” here in the heart of the High Court? Dawnrowan seemed to have an exaggerated view of his unpopularity.

  “No,” I said quickly. “He didn’t even know what I planned to—”

  “Silence!” Greyfall snapped at me, interrupting. Then he turned to the blue guard. “Don’t bother talking to her, Whisperdrift. She’ll just lie anyway. Wait for the trial. Then we’ll see how innocent your ‘king’ really is.”

  Whisperdrift stepped aside, her expression troubled. I didn’t have much time to ponder the situation. The guards dragged us out onto the edge of one of the sepals and, instead of loading us into a horse-drawn contraption, simply locked their arms around us and leaped off the edge.

  I screamed. Everything in my body clenched; I curled phantom toes against the nothingness beneath. The guards’ broad wings caught at the air like parachutes. We were most definitely falling—I don’t think they could have gained altitude while holding us if they’d tried—but there was enough strength in their wings to help us drift toward the snow at a safe speed and land with something less than bone-shattering force.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” I said in a quaking voice as silent Silverwind steadied me; I’d gone all wobbly again. The guards waited for my legs to regain the power of movement, and then they pushed us ahead of them toward a sort of double storm-cellar door built into a snowy hump of earth near the base of the palace. The doors looked to be carved from the same green stone as the stem.

  The guards let go of us for the moment—where would we go? An array of portals was spread out around us in concentric rings, but we’d never be able to get to any of them before they stopped us, and they knew it. One guard each took a door and heaved them apart; then they shoved Elliott and me onto a stone stairway that angled steeply down into the darkness.

  We went ahead, abreast, the guards holding us by the arms from behind. Silverwind had noticed my trouble on the stairs from the audience chamber and steadied me with surprising care. Behind us, Greyfall murmured the words of a spell, raising the scent of greenery and setting both the guards’ forms to glowing softly in the darkness. Below, there was no light source at all, but the guards’ luminescence now suggested the prison’s dimensions. It appeared to be a high-ceilinged cavern, roomy enough that it could have comfortably seated the patrons of an opera, had the room been furnished for it.

  As we descended, a half dozen prisoners became faintly visible scattered throughout, sitting motionless on the cavern floor without even looking up at the approaching light. Some sort of enchantment must have held them all immobile. In the dimness I couldn’t tell what types of fey they were, only that they varied in size and shape, and none appeared to be sidhe.

  Our cell, our cage, looked to be made of twisting, smooth-sanded tree limbs, entwined until there was barely enough space for an arm to poke through in the widest of the gaps. A gumdrop-shaped doorway had been cut from the frame of the cage and replaced with a slab of solid oak.

  Not far from the cage were a table, chair, and cot; from the cot rose an autumn-hued male sidhe with elegant branching antlers who had apparently been sitting there in pitch blackness until our arrival. He reached into a bag at his belt as his path converged with ours, and from it he withdrew a simple wooden key. He approached the cage, turned the key in a wooden lock, and swung the door wide. Greyfall and Silverwind took my backpack and shoved us into the cage. Before I’d even quite regained my balance, the great oaken door was swinging shut again, and the key turned and clicked in the heavy lock.

  Without another word, the two brother-guards turned and ascended the prison staircase, taking their light with them as they went. In the deepening gloom, I peered through a gap in the cage at the antlered guard, who was putting the key back into his bag with one hand and carrying my backpack away with the other.

  “Hey,” I said. “Is there any way you could turn on a light down here?”

  Either he didn’t speak English or he was ignoring me, because he simply dropped my backpack on the table and then lay back on his cot, closing his eyes. His manner, his absolute stillness, was so like the prisoners’ that I wondered if he, too, were under an enchantment.

  The door closed with a soft boom behind the departing guards, leaving the cavern in absolute darkness.

  “Well, this is scary,” I said to Elliott. “Now I’m not sure I want you to . . . fall asleep.” The guard probably couldn’t understand me
, but I wasn’t going to take any chances by talking about our plan.

  “Why not?” said Elliott. So like Alondra’s voice in the darkness, though not at all her tone.

  “I’ll be alone down here if you do. I can’t see a thing; it’s creepy.”

  “If I don’t . . . sleep, then I won’t be any good to you.”

  “I know,” I said, my belly knotting. “Get some rest.”

  I helped Elliott arrange his facade into a sort of fetal position at the back of the cage, and then he abandoned it. In a flash the entire cavern was revealed to me, and I cringed, glancing toward the guard, looking for a light source.

  I am showing it to you, said what sounded like Elliott’s Alondra voice. In your mind. The guard cannot see it, nor hear me.

  Elliott made himself appear on fake Alondra’s inert shoulder, in the form of a crow—not white-breasted like Brand, but as black as the ones in L.A.

  Are you ready to let me fully into your mind? he asked me.

  I nodded, not sure if he could hear my thoughts until I’d given him permission, and not wanting to speak aloud to a cell mate who was supposedly asleep.

  Just relax your mind, said Elliott. I am not going to possess you; I am simply going to accustom myself to the energy of your thoughts so that I can pick up on them and transmit them to others.

  I nodded again impatiently and tried my best to relax.

  Whatever he was doing in there, it felt unnerving, like a couple of daddy longlegs skittering around all over my brain.

  How long is this going to take? I thought at him experimentally.

  It is already done, he said. You can communicate with images, or by imagining speech, whichever is easier.

  Go see what Claybriar and Dawnrowan are doing, and show me. Find Shock, and tell him that now would be a good time to come to the White Rose.