She had also changed her dress, swapping it for a cream sheath trimmed in iridescent white-and-silver feathers. She looked more like someone getting ready to present at the Oscars than a queen in charge of a large conclave, but maybe that was part of the point. This was her Kingdom, but as long as Aethlin and Maida were here, she wasn’t the heavy hand of authority. She could afford to look a little softer, and allow people to think of her as one of the good guys, rather than one of the ones they should be afraid of.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Belatedly, I realized she might never have heard the traditional form for announcing the death of a pureblood noble. “I’m saying King Antonio Robinson has been murdered.” I held up the fragment of Merry Dancer I was still holding. “I found this on the floor. They broke when they fell, and they fell when he was killed.” A Candela’s Merry Dancers were born alongside them, and lived as long as they did.
Her eyes went to the shell, and then darted toward the shadows under the table. She had to see the way the shadows pooled, gathering around the body. That didn’t mean she had to admit it. Her gaze shifted back to me.
“Who did this?”
At least she wasn’t making accusations. That was a nice change. “I don’t know,” I said. “But the night-haunts haven’t arrived. There’s still time to examine the body, if we can keep this room sealed for long enough for me to do it. Send in the Luidaeg, if you’re worried people will say I killed him and am trying to get official dispensation to cover it up.”
Arden blinked. “Why the Luidaeg?”
“Because she’s Firstborn, which means Oberon’s Law doesn’t apply to her unless she kills another of the Firstborn,” I said. Oberon might not have meant for his Law to be interpreted that way, but since none of us had the magical strength to challenge one of the First, his intentions on the point didn’t really matter. They could kill with impunity, and sometimes did. Even the Luidaeg was a killer under the right circumstances, if the stories were to be believed. And the stories usually were. “She could have broken King Antonio’s neck in the middle of the conclave, and no one would have been able to do a damn thing about it. That means she probably didn’t do it, and has nothing to hide. She’s the only person here that I know for sure didn’t do it, aside from me, Quentin, Karen, Raj, and Tybalt. And she can’t lie—physically can’t—which means no one can say she’s lying to cover up my part in the murder.”
“How do you know they didn’t do it?”
“They were with me. Tybalt is the one who arranged the meal on the balcony.”
“It could have been a means of misdirecting your attention,” said Lowri. “Every killer needs an alibi.”
I turned to frown at her. “Tybalt is a cat and sometimes he’s a jerk, but he’s also a king. He wouldn’t commit a murder at a conclave. Not when it could hurt his people.”
As if the repeated mentions of his name had summoned him, Tybalt stepped out of the shadows in the nearest corner of the room, nostrils flaring as he scented blood. Finally, his gaze settled on me. “I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” he asked wearily.
“What are you doing here?” I countered.
“The nobles are growing restless,” he said. “Queen Windermere left to find their missing colleague, and I have been dispatched to find Queen Windermere. I would take offense, had I not so dearly wished to escape that room. Raj wished to escape as well; I have no doubt he’s halfway home by now. And I find you standing over a dead body. Some things, it seems, are incapable of changing.” He finally allowed himself to look directly at the shape under the table, and wrinkled his nose. “King Robinson. How predictable. If anyone was going to get themselves murdered to guarantee they would remain the center of attention, it would be him.”
“You don’t sound upset,” said Arden. For the first time, I heard the quaver in her voice, and realized she wasn’t calm, no matter how she might seem: she was frozen, gripped by the sort of shock I hadn’t been able to feel for years.
“Oh, oak and ash,” I said. “Is this your first dead body?”
To my surprise, Arden laughed. It was a low, bitter sound, viscous and cloying. “No,” she said. “That was my mother, when I found her with her throat slit in this very knowe. But it’s my first in over a century, and it’s a goddamn King dead under my fucking roof, so you’ll forgive me if I’m a little on edge!”
“My apologies, Your Highness,” said Tybalt, moving to stand next to me. He wasn’t as close as he normally was—he was still holding himself that little bit apart, on ceremony, reminding the world of his dignity—but he was there, close enough for me to smell the faint pennyroyal warmth of his magic. That helped more than I could say. “When one spends as much time in October’s company as I have, one grows more accustomed to the dead than is perhaps ideal. I’m sorry I can’t be distressed over the death of a petty man who invited assassination with his every act and word. I wish I could. It would make the pleas of my innocence easier to accept.”
“This is awful.” Arden shoved her hair back from her forehead, dislodging several feathers. On cue, pixies appeared from somewhere in the folds of her skirt and began restyling her hair, chiming angrily. Arden ignored them. “How can he be dead? He was under the hospitality of my house, for Titania’s sake!”
Her switching between mortal and fae profanity was starting to become jarring. “We can fix this,” I said. “We can find out who killed him. We can keep this from getting any worse than it’s already going to be. Just get me the Luidaeg.”
“Why, so you can cover up another murder?” The voice was unfamiliar. I turned. There, in the doorway of the room, stood Kabos and Verona, the King and Queen of Highmountain. Kabos looked furious. Verona looked like she was about to be sick.
Kabos left his wife behind as he advanced on me, expression filled with surprising anger. I resisted the urge to fall back, away from the accusation in his eyes. Mortals often have trouble standing up to purebloods. Old survival instincts and the memory of a time when a human fighting with the fae always ended badly keep humanity from crossing certain lines. The more fae I’ve become, the easier it’s become for me to stand my ground. Still, a part of me knew that I should be terrified. The distance between me and Tybalt seemed suddenly very great.
“How could you?” demanded Kabos. He was close enough that I could see the silver specks in his eyes, like someone had attacked him with a bucket of glitter.
The image was surreal enough to let me shake off the stillness that had fallen over me, and say, “I didn’t do anything. I found the body. That’s all. You’ve never even met me. How is it that you’re first in line to accuse me?”
“We drew numbers back in the gallery,” said Tybalt mildly, earning himself a poisonous look from Verona and a confused blink from Kabos.
The distraction only lasted for a moment. Kabos’ gaze swung back to me as he said, “You’re a changeling. Your presence here is an honor you should be laboring with every instant to earn, to prove that you deserve the things you’ve been given. Things that might have been better given to someone more deserving—someone who would truly appreciate them.”
I blinked slowly, trying to reconcile the corpse on the floor with the sudden lecture about my place in the political structure of Faerie. I couldn’t do it. I could do a lot of things, but that? That was a thing I couldn’t do. It was too nonsensical. “The hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Did someone walk around hitting you every time you made sense when you were a kid, and when that worked they decided to give you a crown? A man is dead. I’m going to focus on that, rather than focusing on whether or not I’m somehow letting down the side.”
Kabos looked startled. All things considered, I was willing to bet it had been a long time since anyone had talked to him like that.
If Kabos had been stunned into silence, his wife sadly hadn’t. Verona stepped up next to him, eye
s narrowed, shoulders tight. I knew righteous fury when I saw it. I didn’t have time for it—not unless we wanted every royal in the place to find their way, one by one, to the dining hall and the corpse of King Antonio—but it was still pretty impressive.
“You do not have the rank, the standing, or quite frankly, the breeding to speak to my husband in that manner,” she said. “You will apologize immediately.”
“Nope,” I said. “But thanks for playing.” She recoiled at the word “thanks.” I hadn’t used the direct, forbidden form. I’d come close enough to be rude. That was good. That was what I’d been shooting for. “Also, if it’s breeding you’re looking for, yeah, my dad was human. He was a good man, and I’m proud to be his daughter. My mother, on the other hand, was Firstborn. So unless you call the First of your race Mommy or Daddy, I think my breeding is better than yours.”
Verona glared. I gazed coolly back. And the sound of someone slowly clapping filtered into the silence between us, causing us both to turn and look at Tybalt.
“Brava,” he said. “Encore. Or, perhaps, consider this: instead of an encore, we could move on to the meat of the matter, and consult with the dead man as to what happened to him?”
I didn’t know whether I wanted to kiss or kill Tybalt. I settled for rolling my eyes, looking at Arden, and asking, “Well? Are you going to let me deal with this?”
“I don’t think we have any choice,” she said. Turning to Kabos and Verona, she bowed shallowly, and said, “If you’ll come with me back to the gallery, I will inform the others as to what has happened. Sir Daye has volunteered to endure the supervision of the sea witch as she attempts to determine the cause of King Robinson’s demise. This should be enough to satisfy even the most traditional among us.”
“And I will stay to watch her until the sea witch comes,” said Tybalt. It was a nice move. If anyone said he couldn’t, they’d be questioning his standing as a king, and he would be within his rights to claim insult against them. I had no idea what that would look like when it was a King of Cats claiming insult against a monarch who wasn’t even in their own demesne, but I had no doubt that it would derail the conclave for longer than anyone wanted. Dead body or not, everyone else still needed to conduct their business and get back home before anyone decided that their thrones had been abandoned.
There are days when I am very, very glad that I will never be a queen.
Kabos and Verona glared at me in unison before they turned to Arden. “Highmountain has been insulted on this day, and we will not forget it,” said Kabos. The phrasing was deliberate: he wasn’t claiming personal insult, which was sort of the pureblood equivalent of saying “make it up to me, or you’re going to be sorry,” but he was making sure Arden knew it was time to start sucking up.
Arden, for her part, clearly understood the situation. She inclined her head and said, “We will find a way to repair the friendship between our peoples. Lowri, please remain here and offer Sir Daye any assistance she needs while she is under the eye of King Tybalt.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Lowri.
“Good.” Arden turned and walked for the door, leaving Kabos and Verona with no choice but to follow, if they didn’t want to look like they were slighting her authority. In short order, I was alone again—except for my fiancé, Lowri and the other two guards, my squire, my niece, and—oh, right—the dead body.
“I did not sign up for this,” I muttered, and knelt, looking critically at King Antonio’s corpse. It was always jarring to see a dead pureblood. The night-haunts would come for him as soon as we left his body alone.
“What are you doing?” asked Lowri suspiciously.
“Nothing, yet,” I said. “Once the Luidaeg gets here, I’m going to ride his blood, see if he saw his killer. That could wrap this up in a nice little bow and let me get home before the sun comes up. But until then, if you could back up and permit me to work, that would be swell.” I was annoyed and I was taking it out on her, maybe unfairly, maybe not.
Then again, she had basically accused me of murder. Although . . .
“Why did you come in here?” I looked over my shoulder, assessing Lowri’s stance and expression. Quentin and Karen were still in the far corner of the room, having gone unnoticed during the chaos. Good. This was going to be educational enough without them getting dragged into the conversation. “I mean, Arden came looking for the missing members of her conclave, and the monarchs of Highmountain came looking for Arden, but why did you come in here?”
“Note how easily I am cut from her narrative,” said Tybalt, with pointed mildness. He sounded like a sarcastic accountant. It worked surprisingly well for him. “I am injured. I am slain.”
“You’re going to be, if you don’t shut up and let Lowri answer.”
He snorted his amusement.
Lowri hesitated before she said, “One of the servers claimed to have heard a strange noise from the dining hall. We went to investigate. When there are this many strangers in the knowe, anything that seems out of place must be investigated. I thought we’d find a scullery maid stealing silver, or a group of changelings scavenging for leftover food. Instead, we found you, standing over the dead body of a king.”
“And I’m the one who’s deposed two monarchs, so naturally, the first question is not ‘did you see anyone else when you came in here,’ but ‘what did you do.’” I resisted the urge to groan. It wouldn’t do me any good. It certainly wouldn’t make Lowri more inclined to keep talking to me. “There’s so much wrong with what you just said that I’m having trouble figuring out where to begin.” Maybe she was going to stop talking to me anyway. “Did anyone bother to hang on to the server who said that they’d heard something strange? I’d like to talk to them.”
There’s a very strict hierarchy among the servant classes in most knowes. Courtiers—people like heralds, pages, even ladies’ maids and butlers—hold themselves apart from guards and security staff. Seneschals tend to come from the guard, which pisses everybody else in the hierarchy off, since it’s like promoting your bouncer to general manager of the bar rather than elevating the assistant manager. Kitchen staff rarely communicate with the rest of the household staff when they can help it, and everybody has a tendency to ignore servers, sculleries, and other “menial” positions. It’s a way of continuing to feel like the sort of jobs the human world phased out years ago still matter, and it creates communication gaps that made me want to scream.
Lowri’s cheeks colored. “No,” she admitted. “There’s to be an hour of drinks and small confections after this phase of the conclave, and all the servers were needed in the kitchen. We let him go.”
“So I’ll be going to the kitchen next, to see if I can find our only possible witness. Got it.” Sometimes I wonder how I got my job, given how bad I am at some of the basic tasks that it entails. And then I spend five minutes in the company of purebloods, and I’m reminded that no matter how inept I sometimes feel, I am worlds and miles ahead of most of the people around me. “Quentin, Karen, can you two start collecting the bits of King Antonio’s Merry Dancers? They’re sort of everywhere.”
“And what am I to do?” asked Tybalt.
I turned to look at him. He was still wearing a mask of cool unconcern, but that was exactly what it was—a mask. I could see the worry in his eyes. He was shaken by all of this, the dead body, the thinly veiled accusations from people we normally regarded as our allies. No matter how much time we spent together, parts of my world would always be as alien to him as parts of his were to me. That was oddly comforting, and gave me the strength I needed to do what had to be done.
“You?” I rose from my crouch, glancing down to be sure that I wasn’t about to crush any more fragments of Merry Dancer as I moved to put my hands on his shoulders. “You’re going to go back to the conclave. You’re going to do what you came here for, and remind those petty, squabbling jerks that you’re a King. Oberon
himself said you were their equal. When they try to ignore that, they’re going against the father of us all. So you don’t let them ignore it.”
His mask slipped, revealing relief and confusion behind it. “Don’t you need me here?”
“Need? No. I have Quentin. I have Karen, at least until the Luidaeg comes. I can handle anything this dead body can throw at me. Want? Always. But as you’ve reminded me already, we can’t always put desires above duty.”
Tybalt’s mouth twisted. “I can’t help feeling as though this is a punishment for neglecting you over these last few days. I wasn’t there when you needed me to be, and so now I am to be sent away, like a second son who can never inherit the estate.”
“I’m not an estate. Even if I were, you would already have inherited me and oh, oak and ash, I’m sure that sort of thing sounds super-romantic in your weird pureblood brain but right now, you need to go. You need to go be a King.” I leaned up and kissed him, just a quick peck. “I’m in the Queen’s knowe. I have my squire, and I’m about to have the supervision and wisdom of the most terrifying woman I’ve ever met. I promise you, I’ll be fine without you for a short period of time. Besides, it’ll give you time to miss me more, so that you’ll remember never to pull this crap again.”
“Beware of women, children,” said Tybalt, turning on Quentin and Karen with the poise and exaggerated dignity of a professor offering wisdom to the young. “This is how they will treat with your tender hearts.”
“I’m too young to date,” said Karen.
“I’m sort of seeing someone, and I’m pretty sure Toby’s about to punch you,” said Quentin.
I punched Tybalt in the arm. He was laughing as he slipped into the shadows and was gone.
Lowri and the other guards were surprisingly silent through all of this. I turned to look at them. They were all staring at the door, wary as mice watching the approach of a cat. Ah. I turned further, to the object of their attentions, and offered a taut smile.
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